Shane Warne the Musical was by far the biggest draw (and find, as it wasn't listed) of the Comedy festival. Tania, Tom, Margot, Nessie + 2, Petra, Kate and I managed to get tickets to a workshop of a new musical from the makers of the much praised “Keating – The Musical”. The new subject, Australia's hero to the sporting world and shameful resident to the Australians, Shane Warne.
We discussed beforehand that even though almost all of us had no idea of his cricketing achievements, most people were aware of the off-the-field tabloid headlines of drugs, booze, smoking and women, and if not, we had his Wikipedia entry printed out to fill in the gaps.
It's worth mentioning that this was a workshop. It was only on for five days at the festival (we saw it on day one), and the team had done a few songs at the big, festival opening, Gala performance the night before. It was explained that the team had never run through the show at the current venue. They needn't have worried, the first half was smooth, slick, embarrassing (for the Australians in attendance), and hilarious. Charting the story of young Wayne's path to cricketing success, (“How do you spell success? A.I.S” (Australian Institute of Sport, built with the sole intention of making sure Australians ARE a success).
Soon we move through the scandals and milestones that dogged his career from his love of Pizza and smoking, a failed Aussie Rules Footie player right through to his playing around with other women whilst on tour and getting caught by a text message sent to his wife by mistake (Cue, “What an SM-mess i'm in”).
Personally I didn't think the second half was as exciting and funny as the first although it had its great moments and we were all left chatting about it for hours after, actually it's days after now.
It's due for release in December, can't wait to see how they polish it up.
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