(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be having a break from theatre. But I'm still reviewing for the Oz...)

Shane Warne: The Musical, by Eddie Perfect. Token Events and Trafficlight. Athenaeum Theatre. December 10. Until January 11. Regal Theatre, Perth, March 18-31. Enmore Theatre, Sydney, May 15-30.

You need more front than Myers to get away with an idea like Shane Warne: The Musical. Fortunately, Eddie Perfect is your man for front.

Perfect takes no prisoners in this glorious piss-take on celebrity, cricket, Australia and musical theatre itself. His unlikely hero is a flawed Everyman (“there’s a little bit of Shane in all of us”), a suburban boy from Ferntree Gully with a golden arm and a mullet.

After he fails in his first ambition of becoming an AFL player, he lounges in a beanbag like Jabba the Hutt, eating pizzas, smoking and being nagged by his mother, until the Call comes from the Australian Institute of Sport. He loses the mullet, buffs up his spin bowling and makes it into the national side. And the rest is history.

Warnie is a kind of tragic anti-hero, wandering haplessly through the pitfalls of celebrity and tumbling into most of them. He wins his girl, and loses her. He wins the Ashes, and loses them. Along the way, he takes those diuretic pills (label warning: “may cause drowsiness or bad theatrical dream sequences”), discovers the charms of groupies in hotel rooms and accepts bribes from seedy Bollywood gamblers.

And, of course, exercises his thumb on his mobile phone (“I’ve got an erection in the frozen food section”, he bewails, in the song What an SMS I’m In).

After a few scenes, Perfect looks more like Shane Warne than Shane Warne does. He has that vertical uber-blonde hair and slightly stocky body. In one of the peculiar reflexive moments that characterise modern celebrity, Warnie was there, two rows in front of us, watching his own life written – or sung – very large.

It can’t always have been comfortable viewing, especially in the numbers that record his marriage, which go for the big musical moment and are surprisingly moving.

The show’s cheerful obscenity is shot through with Perfect’s trademark intelligence, which mercilessly skewers the absurdities of mass culture.

Besides being a fond tribute to Warnie, it’s a dizzying musical tour: the songs range from rap to gospel to rock’n’roll to Sondheim.

Perfect has surrounded himself with a top production team, including Neil Armfield, who provides the seamless direction, and Gideon Obarzanek’s snappy and hilarious choreography.

It shows what happens when the crème de la crème of contemporary Australian theatre go for the commercial throat. It’s vital, rude, smart, irresistibly funny and passionately performed. Don’t miss it.

This review is published in today's Australian.