STAINLESS STEEL RAT

You do kind of get the impression that, were he in the audience, Julian Assange would love Stainless Steel Rat. Partly because he’s a showman; partly because this is one of the few times the whistleblower platform has received anything like the dramatic treatment one suspects Wikileaks’ frontman reckons his organisation deserves.

Award-winning playwright Ron Elisha brings us this largely funny exploration of man, sex scandal, and media fascination: framed as a documentary (mockumentary?) about Assange’s life’s work and his edging towards a Nobel Prize nomination, Stainless Steel Rat is by turns a comedy and a melodrama. Darren Weller is highly convincing as the slimy yet charismatic Assange – the play’s eponymous Stainless Steel Rat – and the production hits the mark humour-wise, thanks largely to cameos from Prime Minister Julia Gillard (Valerie Bader) and Attorney-General Robert McClelland (Peter Phelps), but is let down by a motley collection of bad accents and the occasional dead line.

It’s hard to tell if Stainless Steel Rat has pretensions to real cultural importance or sees itself simply as a comical take on the sometimes ridiculous news agenda of our times. Ultimately it doesn’t quite make it as either, but it is an often amusing and (if you don’t know much about the history of Wikileaks) occasionally enlightening production – and judging from the near-continuous laugh track that accompanied the play’s premiere, it’s a definite crowd-pleaser.

Until Jul 17, Seymour Centre, cnr City Rd & Cleveland St, Chippendale, $30-59, 9351 7940, sydney.edu.au/seymour