Brian Kelly reviews October 11's performance of Gladys: A Musical Affair at Wollongong Town Hall.
Clearly, they hadn’t all come to put the boot into our fallen premier. One chap at Wollongong Town Hall’s table 19, waiting among 150 others to see Gladys: A Musical Affair, admitted he had written to our erstwhile leader in the days after her ICAC downfall, telling her she had been hard done by and that the bloke from Wagga had been punching above his weight.
Then there was the woman in a startling red jacket just like the star’s who was hellbent on going to her car at halftime to replace it with a less abrupt purple number.
Were they cheers or jeers? The roars of support both genuine and ironic underlined the audience’s mixed feelings for what Gladys Berejiklian had done, represented, denied, fallen for. Beyond that, this creation of Illawarra musicians Tia Wilson and Nick Rheinberger was a frivolous hour marrying comedy and music with few deadspots and a whole shooting range of nuance. And if the quartet on stage gave the impression they were kind of winging it, cast your mind back to how the state leadership seemed to cobble it together day by day during the 2020 bushfires and pandemic.
Rheinberger played Wagga MP Daryl Maguire as country oik giddy with power, which hardly gave anyone’s imagination a hernia, and a sinister edge emerged in his I’m The Boss song. Wilson played Berejiklian as confident, strident and ebullient, the only tad of nerves emerging when presented by a stream of “eligible” bachelors. Her most vulnerable moment came with her torch ballad, when on came the glitter jacket for a Blues In The Night-style lament. Even this was undercut with comedy in the form of a kazoo solo, which is never not funny.
The lead pair gave the piece further breadth, possibly unexpectedly, with something of a tender duet exploring the what-ifs of the Maguire-Berejiklian relationship, what was at stake and the tumult upon its revelation. Mel Wishart won hearts with her portrayal of Dr Kerry Chant and her signature tune Just Keep Calm, which borrowed hysterically from the likes of Oliver!’s Reviewing the Situation with its minor key and frenetic phrasing. Her mastery of reed instruments was the icing on Rob Laurie’s keyboard cake throughout.
With Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over kicking them out the door, the crowd left reminded that Daryl and Gladys weren’t the only ones saying “it’s complicated” – how voters felt about her remains complex. A note to its clever creators: never mind trying to get Gladys to see it – take it to the Riverina and play to packed houses.
Read more: ‘Gladys: A Musical Affair’ is coming to Wollongong