Short shorts, adrenaline racing, bodies colliding and big personalities, rugby league knows how to put on a show. Combine the on-field spectacle with all the off-field drama and questionable behaviours and you have a screenplay that almost writes itself. Catch all the action in Rugby League The Musical coming to The Street Theatre on Wednesday 13 July.
“The show is an academic thesis that suggests that rugby league isn’t just the greatest game of all, it is in fact the greatest musical of all – it just doesn’t have music,” says creator, Denis Carnahan.
Combining the athletics of Greco-Roman wrestling, villains to rival any Disney tale, and hometown heroes who could inspire an Aussie pub rock ballad, the sport doesn’t need any embellishing.
“It is inherently funny because you’ve got people who are elite athletes who are belting each other, at the same time as the brutality, they also possess an enormous and intricate skill. At the same time, they are highly disciplined athletes who get off the field and do stupid things on the drink,” Carnahan says.
Claiming the title of Australia’s hardest-working sports satirist, the writer and Raiders super fan returns to his hometown with an almost entirely new line-up. Creating songs for various media outlets for a number of years, he has built quite a catalogue of tracks to choose from.
“There’s a song by John Cougar Mellencamp that I’ve adopted as a little ditty about Jack and Latrell instead of Jack and Dianne about the love affair between Jack Wighton and Latrell Mitchell which has led to Jack Wighton leaving the Raiders. That’ll be a particularly pertinent one in Canberra,” he says.
Finding inspiration from the antics of players, referees and those involved with the teams, Carnahan says the ideas often just come to him. Sometimes the act or behaviour makes him think of a tune or names lend themselves to popular songs.
“The most recent one, Reece Walsh, a Brisbane Broncos player, he completely lost control of himself on the field and started swearing at the referee and calling the referee names that sailors would be embarrassed by. There’s a song by the Bee Gees, Grease Is the Word so I changed that to Reece Had Some Words,” he smiles.
Carnahan says the show is more a sports-infused cabaret than a ‘proper’ stage musical; there are no fancy stage props or big bands and lighting, just one man, a variety of characters and a guaranteed good time.
Not relying on crude language for laughs, the show is accessible for younger audiences, however, Carnahan recommends parental discretion if deciding to bring children younger than 12.
Another thing Carnahan notes is that the questionable behaviour he makes light of in his acts is never one that has caused harm to outside parties.
“If there’s someone committing sexual assault, there’s no way you can turn it into a piece of humour because there’s a victim involved,” he says.
Not just for avid rugby league fans like himself, Carnahan says that everyone will be able to appreciate the songs and humour. Many of the songs have a backing video that will highlight the event being sung about to ensure everyone gets the joke.
“If someone’s a huge rugby league fan, they’ll get into the minutia of the songs and the detail of the history and the incident. Someone who’s not into rugby league will just get into the music, and the humour and they actually laugh a lot more because they’re not going to be caught up in the detail,” says Carnahan.
Catch the controversies, highlights and personalities of the greatest game in Rugby League The Musical at The Street Theatre on Wednesday 13 July 7.30pm; thestreet.org.au
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