REVIEW: A Raging Election | Showroom Theatre

There’s something funny going on in Australian politics these days: double-crossing, two-timing, back-stabbing, one-upping, back-pedalling…or is this just a normal day at work for a politician? Showroom Theatre certainly has something to say about the recent machinations of Australia’s leaders and they have found plenty to joke about, perhaps in order to stop themselves crying. They’ve done a comedic double-take on actual events, where only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Showroom Theatre’s founding fathers are James Marzec and John McPherson, and they began writing A Raging Election well before the leadership spill and election took place. They only thought they were hypothesizing about such events happening until they both tuned into the news from either side of the planet (Marzec was in London, and McPherson was at home in Perth) and saw that the show they had been working on was becoming a reality. So there was some last-minute scrambling to rewrite numbers and rework scenes until they had the musical that is now up and running for five nights at Subiaco Arts Centre.