The Speechmaker – MTC

Overview

The Speechmaker is billed as one of the highlights of the Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2014 season, and it's easy to see why. It has a cast of marquee players, a script by Working Dog — the Australian comedy legends behind The Castle and Frontline — and the action all takes place aboard Air Force One. Rapidly escalating revelations of a terrorist plot threaten to overshadow the festive mood of Christmas Eve and the play promises madcap gags and high stakes from the get-go.

At times some fine performances threaten to elevate The Speechmaker from vaudeville into effective political satire – Erik Thomson is especially good as the President, the character made real by the choice to play an unironic belief in his own empty rhetoric. But where the imperfections of debut playwright Eddie Perfect’s script brought vital, unpredictable colour to The Beast in 2013, Working Dog’s first outing onstage shows an unfamiliarity with the form that is more vice than virtue.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the endless, numbing transitions between multiple locations aboard the plane, each making heavy use of the revolving stage and repetitive sound design. Director Sam Strong manages to find many moments within these transitions for physical comedy, especially from actors like Brent Hill and Sheridan Harbridge, but weirdly, this only draws all the more focus to every tension-puncturing ride on the carousel. The device also invites an unfortunate comparison with the same company’s West Wing-flavoured Richard III in 2010, directed by Simon Phillips.

With a tone that’s unerringly upbeat throughout we’re left wanting more light and shade. For instance, Lachy Hulme’s character — an Under Secretary of Defence — is loaded with suitably European, finger-steepled menace but left with little else, like a lukewarm Dr Strangelove. One of the many strengths of Working Dog’s writing for television has been their commitment to truly dark humour, especially in Frontline. In every episode it festered inside the characters’ listless interior lives, and often bubbled to the surface of the world they inhabited; look no further than the brutal ending of the episode 'The Siege'.

After a show like The Speechmaker it would be easy to see the MTC as locked in an ouroboros-like relationship with its massive subscriber base, forced to program crowd-pleasers just to maintain its size. In fairness, it's commercial successes like these that allow the company to support initiatives like the NEON Festival of Independent Theatre.

But even then, as Literary Manager Chris Mead writes in the program for The Speechmaker: "People turn to the plays of the moment to know the truth and the lies of the times." If the tens of thousands of punters who’ve bought tickets to this play — at the moment the entire season is sold out — are expecting entertainment, they’ll be in for pleasant farce. But anyone looking for a glimpse into the "truth and the lies" will be left wanting.

Photo credit: Jeff Busby.