Performed by George Glass duo Nic Conway & Braden Hamilton, ScoMo’s Sunday Service sees Scott Morrison and friends rambunctiously recount the route to his soiling himself in a McDonald’s and why the incident was essential to God’s Plan for him to become prime minister, alleging that the escapades we’ve come to know today have roots in 1997.
Nic Conway greets the audience as a clergyman, whose accent could give Fleabag’s Hot Priest a run for his money, and at first seems potentially “cool and sweary” himself. Father invites the congregation to stand and recite a mandatory, gibberish hymn, which – although well-meaning – was likely too early in the show to be anything but awkward for participants.
Despite an early but well-managed technical difficulty and the priest turning out to be rather ordinary, Conway’s subsequent and shifting characters easily grasp attention as the show moves from the present day to 1997. Jenny, the angel Gabriel, and Craig from Video Ezy are comical, quirky, and quick-witted. When Braden Hamilton as ScoMo winds up the audience with his well-emulated banality and blathering, these characters and their interactions with him successfully take the edge off.
As the characters’ at-first civilised conversations wade into impertinence and their actions become more outrageous, any sober, authority-respecting and/or church-going guilt is disregarded by the audience. Viewers delight in the increasingly on-target metaphorical swats about mishaps from curries to Robodebt, submarines to Hillsong and the infamous ukulele, set to the timeline of Morrison’s week-long journey to the toilet.
Humorously harmonised and choreographed numbers “God Works in Mysterious Ways”, “Bureaucratic Love” and “Delivery of the Holy Poo” punctuate the progressively delirious plot effectively, but also highlight the potential of the show to be more musically inclined, as might be expected from its title.
ScoMo’s Sunday Service also lacks definition of space and time with minimal detail and variation in set, lighting, and costume. However, the show’s haphazard nature is part of its delight. The comedy is organic yet intentional, frank, and fun-loving, given the deserved spotlight upon a humble stage.
While a little slow to start, once inhibitions are lost, the show steals its audience from their dejected reality and invites them to a world where they can laugh at things like national leaders doing accidental number twos, because of course those rumours are “complete and utter rubbish”... right?
ScoMo’s Sunday Service is showing at Arthur Art Bar until Friday, March 18, 2022.