COMEDY: GODZONE

Max Gillies is one our most recognisable actors, which is really quite a paradox for a man that’s famous for his ability to become unrecognisable. Since hosting the classic eighties political satire The Gillies Report on the ABC, the talented mimic has slipped into the slippery skin of every politician from Menzies and Whitlam though to Howard, Keating and now Rudd. His latest collaboration with writer Guy Rundle, The Godzone, opens this week at the Seymour Centre. The Godzone is the pair’s fourth work together and the first to tackle the new political order since the ‘Ruddslide’ of 2007.  It’s a tantalising prospect, given satirists’ reputation for thriving under right-wing governments and going soft on the left. Politicians in their sights include Abbott, Gillard, Hockey, Barnaby Joyce and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Gillies promises to use prosthetics, make-up and spot-on mimicry to lampoon the main players in a political scene where the separation of church and state is more tenuous than ever. By subverting the spin and skewering the hypocrisy, Gillies and Rundle promise to serve up the timely satire we’ve all been praying for.

Feb 23-Mar 6, Seymour Centre, cnr City Rd & Cleveland St, $50-58, 9351 7940, www.seymour.usyd.edu.au

BY ALEX BODMAN