Project Description
PAUL McDERMOTT and STEVEN GATES
SPIEGELTENT
(Canberra Theatre)
10 April 2019
Live Review
Interviewer – Benjamin Smith
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“Audiences need to rush and get a ticket to this show.” – Entertainment Hive
“An evening of rollercoaster feelings – of the good kind – for everyone” **** – The Clothesline
“Compellingly beautiful” **** – Fringe Review, Adelaide
“From the moment they entered the room together, their energy was undeniable… once they reached the stage, they were unstoppable…” – The Music, Perth
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Paul McDermott forcefully inserted himself into the national psyche thirty years ago with his uni revue style trio, the Doug Anthony All Stars. He took up residence in Australia’s living rooms about a decade later with the enormously popular tv talk show, Good News Week, with sidekicks Mikey Robbins and Julie McCrossin. Now he and Steven Gates from that other comedy three-piece, Tripod, are touring and recording together.
Freshly shaven after sporting an impressive, Karl Marx inspired beard on his latest tv project Think Tank, McDermott returns to his old hometown to perform a night of crooning and general buffoonery with Gates playing the straight man and McDermott’s erstwhile keeper. Gates, who’s impressive musical talent is key to the show’s success, tempers McDermott’s excesses admirably and keeps things moving.
McDermott’s onstage persona, with its usual snarky conceit is in full fine form and, having now gotten more salt than pepper on top, is less of the brash firebrand and more of the grumpy old man. The jokes are pretty good, if not a little easy to see coming and the songs are wonderful. His voice is truly extraordinary and its easy to see why some folks resent the gods for giving it to him.
The Spiegeltent is the ideal place for a show like this. It’s small enough to be intimate and the circus style construct gives a bit of context for the snake-oil salesman huckstering that defines most of the performance. The audience, most of whom have probably followed him since their own days of being brash firebrands, are older and more subdued than those McDermott remembers from his days at The Big Gig. But, with him being a local boy made good, and fondly remembering him from his days at ANU, Canberra harbours a certain fondness for his antics, and they receive the show well.
It’s a not unsupported conclusion to assume that Gates probably writes much of the prepared material. It has in many parts a kind of understatement, a subtlety, that McDermott seems neither capable of, nor particularly inclined towards. They play one number “White Man’s Prison” about the travails of modern masculinity and it becomes the show’s running joke.
There are a few more poignant moments though and the show closes with a moving tribute to a fallen friend and colleague, called Stone Crows. Moments later, McDermott and Gates are outside at the merch desk selling and signing CDs. Actually, Gates is selling and signing CDs, McDermott is perched on a post telling people to buy a CD or fuck off. At a certain point the premise slipped away and there was no invitation to purchase, just a 57 year old man in a quasi-Hawaiian shirt telling middle aged public servants to get fucked. Predictably, they loved every bit of it.
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Don’t miss the chance to see these two extraordinary talents, together at last.
Paul McDermott & Gatesy Go Solo in Sydney:
Saturday 20th July (8pm)
City Recital Hall, 2 Angel Place, Sydney NSW
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For more information, head HERE
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