Jonathan Biggins is back in his celebrated role as Paul Keating and, as he tells arts editor HELEN MUSA, audiences can’t get enough of the ‘re-tweaked’ second coming of The Gospel According to Paul.

The Gospel According to Paul is coming back to Canberra shortly, this time with a brilliant subtitle, The Second Coming.

It’s a clear indication there will be a few changes to the smash-hit biographical comedy and political satire about the life, landmark achievements and wit of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. 

The show’s director, Aarne Neeme, hinted to me in Sydney a week ago that some of the material had been updated, so I phoned creator and actor Jonathan Biggins.

If Biggins is to be believed, and he surely is, you’d better book quickly, because the show is packing out venues everywhere.

When the new version opened in Penrith, Biggins told me, one woman came up to him afterwards and said: “This is a new show, it feels completely new.”

“It’s not,” Biggins assures me, “but there’s a lot of new stuff in it.”

That is partly because Paul Keating, the former prime minister at the centre of the show, seems to become more relevant as people increasingly drift towards populist leaders. It’s arguable that his rigorous approach to leadership is precisely what we need at this time.

Biggins has his own theory about Keating’s continuing influence. Perhaps, he suggests, Keating may still have something to do with the political appetite for changes such as cuts to negative gearing.

In the theatre world at least, Biggins says, “people just can’t get enough of him,” and especially of Keating’s famous love of verbal sparring.

There are certainly changes to the show, with Biggins saying they have taken “things from a different angle”. But at heart, he says, it remains the same show, telling the story of Keating’s life from his birth in 1944 onwards, although it has been “re-tweaked” a little.

That re-tweaking is enough to make audiences think they are seeing something completely new, and Biggins has form here. Along with his former Wharf Revue colleagues Phil Scott and Drew Forsythe, he became adept at making small updates to their scripts that somehow made audiences feel they were hearing an entirely new show.

In this latest edition, the stage Keating casts a critical eye over tax reform, including changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, politicians’ fondness for getting involved in podcasts and, as he considers the rise of Pauline Hanson, which happened immediately after Keating’s days in power, he also reminds us of the “Joh for Canberra” push during the Bjelke-Petersen era.

“There are one or two references to America but not much,” Biggins says. The focus, he says, is more squarely on what Keating would regard as the lack of quality leadership.

And that, perhaps, is one of the main points of the show, which argues that the lack of rigorous, substantial leadership is painfully obvious everywhere.

Biggins, who is naturally sympathetic to “Mr Keating”, as he likes to call him, is nevertheless prepared to admit that his hero enjoyed the luxury of governing in a time before social media. 

The Gospel According to Paul first premiered in 2019 and has since enjoyed seasons all over the country, including no fewer than five in Sydney.

“I thought that surely after five seasons people would have had enough of it,” Biggins says.

“But it’s selling like hotcakes.”

The Gospel According to Paul: The Second Coming, The Playhouse, September 15-20.

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