Press conferences are back with a swing, with Gladys: A Musical Affair opening to a full house and a standing ovation at the Sydney Fringe Festival this week.
“We’ve sold out every night in Sydney and we’ve got a waiting list of over 100 people,” says the show's creator, ABC Illawarra’s Morning Show presenter Nick Rheinberger.
“What we're trying to do with the show is document this weird few years that we've all been through – Black Summer, followed by Covid.”
Nick wrote the music and lyrics as part of a satirical side hustle with his partner, Tia Wilson, who plays former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian. Last Saturday, the couple gave festival goers at Kiama’s Folk by the Sea an exclusive preview.
“We did a Daryl song called Daryl Maguire Esquire, which was great fun, but we had a real hit with a sort of Calypso song we do called Gladys at 11 o’clock, which is about those daily press conferences that everyone watched religiously.”
The former Liberal leader is a complex character, Nick acknowledges. “There’s no denying that during Covid, plus the bushfires, plus floods, she was like our mother, and she did an amazing job, worked harder than anybody.
“In one newspaper, she was The Woman Who Saved Australia – and yet two weeks later she was gone, because of this relationship with Daryl. It’s like a phoenix going too close to the sun … it had all the elements of classic tragedy. So we thought: ‘We’ve got to turn this into a show.’"
Four stars, multiple roles
Gladys: A Musical Affair stars Tia, Nick, Mel Wishart and Rob Laurie. All four actors are also musicians and play multiple roles.
“We swap instruments incessantly,” Nick says. “There are many, many colourful blazers, which is, of course, Gladys’s signature. We’ve got an entire tree, like a hat rack full of blazers, which is part of our set.
“I play Dodgy Daryl in his Akubra, as well as health minister Brad Hazzard, mostly silently in a mask.
"Rob plays [RFS commissioner] Shane Fitzsimmons, as well as Gladys’s dad, and Mel Wishart has a very funny turn as health officer Kerry Chant, with an increasingly manic song called Just Keep Calm, while she plays the clarinet.”
Pickled Herrings for starters
Nick began his media career as a comedy writer 33 years ago, after busking around Australia with a quartet called the Pickled Herrings.
“My first job in radio was writing comedy for a breakfast program in Canberra at 4.30 in the morning and there was always an instrument next to the desk, guitar and ukulele. So I used to do lots of funny songs and that’s my stock in trade really…
“I grew up in a family that was in the theatre. Mum and Dad did lots of different shows. Other parents were playing tennis or bridge or whatever, but they were always on stage … I was always babysitting my brothers and my sister while they were doing Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma. Dad was a wonderful writer and poet, comedian as well.”
Nick has been a regular at the Illawarra Folk Festival for the past 15 years but it was his day job on ABC radio that inspired this latest musical endeavour, which he describes as “a form of therapy” after months of non-stop broadcasting through Black Summer. “It was quite debilitating for all of us, although we weren’t directly in the path of the flame.”
In the aftermath, Nick took a break on the Central Coast and spent it writing songs. “That became a Black Summer rock opera called Watch And Act, which we put on at the Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre with a choir and a rock band and video projection. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.”
Lockdown inspiration
In Watch and Act, fictional Gladys fronted a press conference, delivering her message via a song called Strong Winds, High Temperatures. Covid lockdowns prompted the character's revival. “Tia and I decided, seeing as everyone was sharing this experience of watching Gladys at 11 o’clock every day, we’d produce a series of videos kind of taking the mickey out of the whole thing – not necessarily about her, but just about the whole situation.”
Tia – a high school teacher when she’s not performing – is known across the Illawarra as part of all-women musical comedy group Cheeky Tzatziki, and one of the mainstays of the Vault Cabaret in Port Kembla. “And she’s increasingly well known as premier Gladys on our YouTube and Facebook pages,” Nick says.
"Tia's very aware of the feminist reading of it, and doesn't want to attack a woman in power just for the sake of it. But if you put your hand up to be the premier of the state and go through the process of ICAC you’ve got to take your medicine when it comes."
Nick wove a pastiche of Armenian music into the show as a nod to Gladys's identity. "She couldn't speak English until she was five; she went to school speaking only Armenian. Her parents are Armenian refugees and she's the epitome of a successful immigrant story in many ways.
"You couldn't help but be a fan of hers and her hard work during Covid and the fires. I watched that every day professionally … she was just a consummate professional.
"But she’s complex and she’s unfortunately had this bad ending, to her political career at least.”
Love off script
With the Covid-era premier having quit politics and now working at Optus, there is one happy ending in the wider drama: the musical affair of Nick and Tia.
“Gladys is largely responsible for us being together,” Nick says.
“Back when I wrote Watch and Act, I immediately wanted her to be Gladys, because there was a bit of a resemblance. She’s a fantastic comedian and musician, and in the course of putting the show together, we discovered we were both single and now we live together in Windang and it’s been a wonderful creative partnership, as well as personal one.”
Next month, their show is coming to the Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival and Wollongong Town Hall, where there’s standing room only on Friday, October 11.
After that Nick would love to take it to regional Australia. “Especially to the home of Daryl Maguire – Wagga Wagga.
“We’ve also said, Gladys, if you want to come, there’s a seat for you.”
Wollongong tickets via Merrigong, visit the Rheinberger and Wilson website for more info.
