Sometimes Jonathan Biggins reckons he feels more like Paul Keating than Paul Keating.
The former prime minister has been ingrained in actor Biggins life, first as part of political satire The Wharf Revue which ran at the Sydney Opera House for 25 years and then in his one-man tribute to Keating, The Gospel According to Paul, brought to Perth from July 23 by Black Swan State Theatre, Biggins has been portraying Keating in The Gospel on the east coast for around five years, but this will be the first time it has come west.
It may also be the last chance for audiences to see the performance, although Biggins says every time they are putting the show to bed someone asks for it to come out again. If the demand is there Biggins says he’s happy to keep going.
He slips easily into the role of Keating.
“I’ve been doing Keating as part of a political satire since 2000, which just wrapped up last month.
I saw Gerry Connolly doing an impression of Paul Keating many, many years ago, and I thought, oh, I could do that, so I had a bit of a go, and then it was popular, and we did him in various guises, with Hawke and with Gillard, and then by himself in monologues.
“I thought, well, this could be a one-man show. And he’s certainly a character who lends himself to a one-man theatrical show. He is a very entertaining, funny and clever person and his life story is fascinating. He rose from leaving school at the age of 14 to becoming the Treasurer and Prime Minister and really the reforms of the whole Keating government have never been matched since.”
Biggins says while Keating was easy to play, The Gospel According to Paul didn’t come together quickly.
“I didn’t use any of the stuff I’d done before so it was all new. I worked up the character and I think it’s good that I can do a passable impression of him, so people tend to think that it’s him – the older I get the more I look like him, which is a bit sad.
“It took a long time, a couple of years to write it. Maybe I was doing other things at the time as well and I’m a very slow writer.
“There was a lot of research because it had to be right. It is factually correct and I used Troy Bramston’s biography of him, the series of interviews he did with Kerry O’Brien, which were turned into a book, Don Watson’s book and story and some other source material.
“So there’s a lot to go through, and then you shape it into his life and why he was there and why he wanted to be talking about his life. It comes down to what he saw, what he thinks leadership is, and the lack of it in most modern political parties. Leadership is about courage and imagination; the imagination to make sense of the big picture and think of something better and then the courage to see it through.
“That was very much the maxim he lived politically by. And you trace it right back through his life, you can see where it all began and how he turned himself into a very powerful political and philosophical being.”
Biggins remembers the first time he took to the stage with the Gospel According to Paul.
“I remember it very well. I was in Wollongong. We had opened the show. The world premiere was in Wollongong. This must have been pre-COVID. That’s how long I’ve been doing it.
“After the first show, Troy Bramston, his biographer, was there, and he came back after the show, and he said, ‘there’s two mistakes, just two. Keating was actually 14 when he left school, because he left school in December, and he turned 15 the next January. And he only made one challenge against Hawke, not two, because the second time, Hawke resigned’. He stood down when they recalled parliament for that one day.
“I thought, well, if that’s the only two mistakes, that’s pretty good. And then when Mr Keating came and saw the show for the first time, he said, thank you for being so generous – whatever that meant.
“I think the joy of this show is it’s very entertaining, it’s very funny, and, not to use the word educational, but it is a reminder that politics can be about the big picture. Things like the Native Title Act, APEC, the introduction of superannuation. It seems fairly dry now, but it was quite revolutionary then.”
The Gospel According to Paul, July 23 to August 3, at the Heath Ledger Theatre.
