Rupert

Last year’s hit MTC production of David Williamson’s revue-style portrait of Rupert Murdoch here returns for a short Sydney season on its way to London’s West End. It has the same vibrantly theatrical direction by Lee Lewis and the same simple but effective design by Stephen Curtis. The cast has been reinforced, most notably with James Cromwell, a genuine American stage, television and movie star.

Williamson is no doubt mindful of offending his subject, and who could blame him? As the show clearly establishes, Murdoch is the most powerful media mogul on earth, a free market extremist and private enterprise warrior king who lets nothing or nobody stand in his way.

I was half-expecting the cops to raid the packed Theatre Royal on opening night and arrest the stalls-sitting author who makes consistently appalling allegations about Our Hero’s 60 years of business dealings in Adelaide, Sydney, London, Hollywood and New York. Surely it can’t ALL be true!

But that’s Williamson’s tricky method. He doesn’t invent crooked deals or wicked plots; he just gives the accumulated Googled facts, presented as a sort of lecture with the aid of a slick team of comedy revue artists. Political and moral judgments are left to the audience.

Cromwell is the contemporary Rupert, a genial host with an all-powerful remote control zapper able to change the lighting and switch scenes on and off. One of his team (Guy Edmonds) plays himself as a driven young man, but then continues to play him exactly the same into feisty old age.

Between them, the other eight pierrots play an avalanche of characters, from world leaders (Jane Turner is fleetingly excellent as Margaret Thatcher) to bewildered media opponents — Glenn Hazeldine, Bert LaBonté and Scott Sheridan bring the house down as a cartoon Packer family.

Danielle Cormack allows us to see the pain of a devoted, then left-behind wife. HaiHa Le is vibrant in pretty much every guise she adopts.

James Cromwell is a problem. Okay, he’s an excellent actor with a commanding presence, able to deliver a two-and-a-half hour lecture with complete assurance. But Rupert Murdoch he ain’t. Did anyone notice how super-tall he is? Did they realise he has an American accent? Maybe nobody will notice in London.

Frank Hatherley

PREVIEW AND BUY THE SCRIPT HERE.

Images: Guy Edmonds, James Cromwell and Danielle Cormack & Guy Edmonds, Jane Turner and James Cromwell. Photographer: James Morgan.