And do you think if I see it a third time Im getting a little obsessed with Mike McLeish? Who else could make a Zegna circa 94 look good like that I ask you!

I couldn’t possibly comment, casey! However I can inform you that I am the proud owner of a navy blue Zegna suit - made in Mexico! There’s a Keatingesque motto in there somewhere….

Laughing (with you!) at your Catholic anecdote!

It’s interesting what you say about Terry Serio. The audience lapped his performance up! I don’t know that it was affectionately, though. However, perhaps some of us can feel sorry for the old bugger now - now that he’s gone - because both the performance and the script were really so close to the bone.

I saw it twice. Once during Howard’s final term, and once in the week following the election. What was most interesting for me was the audience reaction to Howard and how it changed pre and post the Howard era. The first time Terry Serio’s satirisation was too close to the bone for people and they could barely bring themselves to clap - there was an undercurrent of aversion to this character. With Howard still in power, it was obvious Serio captured it so well it made people recoil from him. In the week following the election however, I noticed how that mood shifted - people could now afford to laugh, be indulgent of Howard the character’s foilbles now he had departed the scene. That was most memorable for me. As much as Keating was being viewed through rose coloured lenses, Howard’s satirisation was now afforded an almost affectionate (thats prob too strong a word) remembrance, that was certainly not evident previously.

What did you think? Did people laugh with ease at Serio’s reminders of Howard’s manipulations and motivations? Or did they still recoil a little? And do you think if I see it a third time Im getting a little obsessed with Mike McLeish? Who else could make a Zegna circa 94 look good like that I ask you!

Howard the musical? I reckon it could be done - maybe with a Greek chorus variously representing indigenous people, refugees, unionists etc… I can imagine a newly elected (or about to be elected) Howard ministry dancing a self-loving, grooving strut & singing ‘we’re coalitious’ (a bit like bootylicious), & someone holding aloft a chalice and sipping it, then spitting the poisonous liquid out, exclaiming “ugh, Latte!” It would be fun to see someone have a go… Hanson would have to make an appearance, as what - a siren? a serpent woman?

David, we may be on cross cutting tracks here, but what I’m saying is that I don’t think Howard attracted the same sort of love (and Robert’s right - it is love) from his supporters as Keating.

How do you explain Harry Clarke, or even Jason Soons explicit “I have never loved him so much” gush on Catallaxy a while back. I didn’t love the little mongrel, and I think it was a different kind of affection that drew people to Keating’s larrikin ability to skewer opponents with words alone, but the blogosphere was awash with the right wing bemoaning the end of a golden age when J-Ho lost.

OMG. I just had a vision of “Company”, but with John Howard in the Bobby role, surrounded by members of the Cabinet giving him a birthday cake. I need a Bex and a lie down now ’cause, yeah, that could *totally* work.

d

Costello! The musical? Hmmm. A musical is ’supposed’ to have an ‘I want’ song up front, in the first couple of numbers, and you’ve got to want it with the sort of longing that makes you burst into song. It comes from the iceberg, not the tip.

(And that’s, I think, the weakness in ‘Keating!’. We never really get a big ‘I want’ out of him, but we all think we know what they are, and there’s a little list in the ‘Leader of the Land’ song, so it doesn’t matter so much)

d

On the way home I came across a group of guys doing some graffiti art in one of the back lanes so stopped for a while to watch them.

As someone who has trouble contolling a pencil (even my stick figures are dodgy) and has used spray cans for painting the odd bit of garden furniture I was very impressed with their skill with a spray can.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/02/05/keating-hes-baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack/

But I am bit weirded out by the number of times Keating has obviously seen this show.

Robert, you should probably see Keating! As I said, the Howard portrayal is so real it’s cruel.

Even to use the word ‘loved’ for a politician, in today’s world, is met with emotional constipation (borrowing a phrase which the author might one day translate into a novel), if not outright scorn.

And this is to say you’re right. Keating was loved, by very many. For some, it was the ideas held forth for the nation, for others, it was that someone would do such a thing. Much more else, no doubt.

But you’ve missed the point about the Howard musical/play. It’s not about Howard. It’s about that waterhole, receding, and how it affects and changes people. (And parts of that are bloody funny, too).

Rudd the musical? It could be built on cartoons alone, so far!

I doubt Howard attracted the same intensity of support.

Jeebers, were we living in the same country for the past 10 years? Howard was far more polarising than Keating, at least among the people I know. That may have been a function of those environments though (financial circles in Sydney, outer suburban Sydney, regional NSW).

Speaking of which, Lazy Sunday for me was manning a stand at Wool Expo. Nobody mentioned Keating or Howard, but mulesing was a hot topic.

Are you saying Capt. Bligh was there as well?

Yep, up in the balcony.

How would it ever be possible for a musical about (the by then unpopular) Paul Keating to be so widely successful?

Keating was loved as much as he was hated. As with most strong leaders, few who are more engaged with politics were indifferent - if 30% of the electorate despised him, then so too did 30% love him.

I doubt Howard attracted the same intensity of support.

Nor, I suspect, will we ever see Rudd! The Musical.

The Howard proposition as a musical or play stonewalls the mind instantly - but for one thing, which opens the mind intriguingly. The character Howard need only be the catalyst by which so many characters can be formed. By Howard obfuscating and othersuch, characters ripe for development can evolve from contact with the Howard characteristics, and from contact with those who’ve also developed from such contact - and you have a very intriguing play where once a play was thought utterly impossible.

While not having seen Keating, one imagines it riffs off at least some of the big picture themes.

Howard, in contrast and as proposed, would provide riveting insight into human nature. Add to that the overt born-to-rule force within the characters affected, and the skinny but fleshing-out softockedness hiding under it - all of whom the play would be built around - and you’ve got a stand-up sit-down pisser, I reckon.

Somewhere sometime a documentary went to air about a wilderscape waterhole slowly drying. Bit by bit, the characteristics of the animals ever-more drawn to the waterhole changed. The meek became brave; weak became strong; strong became weak, or more perilous, malicious, calculating. Characteristics changed dramatically.

Characters swift in otherwise daily life met with - now within the closing confounds of that limiting environment - otherwise clumsy creatures now also grown swift, as the latter realises its reduced opportunity and conserves for its moment of opportunity. Characters grand in a thousand ‘kills’ aforehand, lolled over fucked(ly), (pre)killed now regardless of changed circumstance by their own unchanging belief in their self-inestimable powers.

Howard. I can see it now.

Bring that on!

Touche, Helen!