Rupert

“Is it cold in here or is it just Rupert?” a woman in front of me asked at the end of David Williamson's new bio-play on the most powerful media magnate of all time. It's true; while Williamsons' historical exposition on Murdoch's rise from the inheritor of an ailing Adelaide newspaper to the head of the world's largest media empire (News Corp) is an extremely entertaining and slick production, it doesn't elucidate any hidden soft side to the man, or any concrete psychological insights to his motivations. Ironically, considering it's narrated by the mogul himself (played masterfully by Sean O'Shea) there's also none of the Murdoch press's trademark titillation. There's not a paedophilic B-grade celebrity in an auto-erotic death orgy in sight or even a hint to Wendi and Tony Blair. This is quickly picked up by our narrator Rupert who says that while “his family is in the play, they're not the focus. It's about me.” Williamson's use of current day Rupert as narrator is a masterstroke – a cheeky device that plays on his control-freak nature and pays dividends in terms of humour and progressing the plot at breakneck speed. Director Lee Lewis works her actors harder than a newsroom on election night to great effect. There's not a dull patch in the whole two and half hours. With all the froth around Murdoch's influence on the coming Australian election, Rupert is an extremely timely and telling performance.