This pitch-perfect Keating impersonation is all iceberg and no tip

THEATRE

The Gospel According to Paul ★★★½

Arts Centre Melbourne, until May 23

Jonathan Biggins in character as Keating.Credit:Brett Boardman

Of all our living prime ministers, Paul Keating draws most attention from the arts. His colossal ego and talent for eviscerating insults are a gift to political satirists, and Keating genuinely appreciated aesthetic pursuits himself.

As treasurer and PM, Keating probably did more than John Howard to set Australia on the path to economic rationalism, but he did so in style – wearing Zegna suits, with strains of Mahler wafting down the hallway and an antique clock collection counting down the minutes until his inevitable defeat.

Prime ministers since haven’t had much time for the arts. Scott Morrison has published a classical music Spotify playlist (alongside his much-derided “Global Eighties” playlist) but it contains no Mahler and it’s hard to imagine him declaring with dry wit – as Jonathan Biggins’ Keating does in The Gospel According to Paul – that he wants the Resurrection Symphony played at his funeral.

Biggins’ one-man show is an impressive feat of political impersonation. It’s more ambitious, and much less overtly parodic, than the great Max Gillies satires, and treats us to a 90-minute audience with a pitch-perfect imitation of Keating as he looks back on his career and throws barbed remarks at the largely unedifying parade of Australian political leaders who came after him.

The depth of research turns it into a form of unauthorised biography on stage. It is, to invert Keating’s swipe at Peter Costello, all iceberg and no tip.

The show delves into Keating’s early life in Bankstown, his leaving school at 14, his political tutelage under Jack Lang and junior role in the Whitlam government. Every jot and tittle of the Hawke/Keating years is pored over in a way that will delight politics tragics and bemuse the less boffinish among us.