According to Guy Rundle, theatre isn't just dying, it's dead. In a piece in today's Crikey in relation to e-books, he claims in an aside that radio and movies killed theatre, leaving "existing theatre as a mix of largely subsidised, state and philanthropic funded events, non-commercial avant-gardes and occasional large spectacles".

This got me thinking, mostly because I don't see a lot of signs of rigor mortis: although maybe I'm seeing theatre through less jaundiced glasses than Rundle. What was theatre before the invention of the mass market? Surely it too was a mixture of the popular vulgate (music hall, melodrama, the huge spectacles of Victorian times), "largely subsidised, state and philanthropic funded events" like the court theatres (Shakespeare and Moliere) and avant garde or "non-commercial" ventures such as Artaud's theatre or the communal mystery plays. Which is to say, was it so different to what it is now? Does this mean it was always dead? Or is it always, despite everything, stubbornly, recalcitrantly alive?

The difference from the 19th century is the mass market, made possible by the invention of reproducible art in film, photography and now digitisation. Theatre was never going to be a mass market phenomenon, aside from the franchise model of a Cameron Mackintosh or Cirque du Soleil: it's at its best in intimate spaces. And intimate spaces co-exist quite happily alongside the mass market, because people seek different things from both of them. As with the e-book argument, people can walk and chew gum at the same time: the rise of one doesn't mean the end of the other.

Anyway, just wanted to wave at all you corpses out there...

At what point does politics move beyond parody? Maybe when you have a Prime Minister who looks as if he belongs in a Lego set, and who ought to be reported to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to English.

Kevin Rudd can shift mid-sentence from warning of "incremental bifurcation" in the Asia-Pacific region (while, of course, needing to "work within the extant political vocabulary with China's national discourse") to his notorious manglings of outdated Australian slang ("fair shake of the sauce bottle").


Weld these together with cliches ("working families", "decisive action", "at the end of the day"), acronyms and buzz words ("synergies", "outcomes", "reverse engineering") and mixed metaphors ("preglacial position"), and you have a Teflon-coated PR machine that evades satire by overtaking it.

Its effectiveness can be seen in Godzone, Guy Rundle and Max Gillies's political satire now playing at the Melbourne Theatre Company. "Let's go for gold!" says Gillies's Rudd. "Let's optimise programmativity!" And it sounds just as boring and incomprehensible as Rudd himself.

It's a measure of the hyperreality of contemporary politics that satire in the noughties moved to featuring the politicians themselves. American comedians Steve Colbert and Jon Stewart invite politicians to be interviewed on their shows. The Chasers were regulars at Canberra press conferences.

The show that most successfully captures the white noise of the political machine - the brilliant ABC series The Hollow Men - doesn't feature politicians at all.

It's a dilemma for a satirist who, like Gillies, has made his name by impersonating politicians. The humour of his mimicry of Bob Hawke, Andrew Peacock and John Howard depended on both the startle of recognition and a recognisable gap between the reality and the portrayal.

The absurd exaggerations reflected back on their originals, prompting us to see them in a different light. But when impersonation can't prompt this frisson, it loses its bite.

It's why The 7.30 Report satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, who don't rely at all on mimicry, still hit their targets: there's a cognitive dissonance at play that spikes their wit with the necessary unreality.

Godzone, on the other hand, seems like an 1980s television skit expanded to the stage. It is as if theatre is where television goes to die.

The set-up is a feel-good public conference, rather like Rudd's 2020 Summit but with added religiosity, where the PM introduces a brace of contemporary political figures to address the audience.

In between perorations from the lectern from Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and various commentators such as Andrew Bolt and Christopher Hitchens, Gillies rushes offstage to apply a new false nose and funny wig. We are then treated to a series of video sketches, "live" interviews with Malcolm Turnbull or Noel Pearson, or ads from the "sponsors".

The best of these was a vision of hell, or Liberal Party HQ, complete with shadowy Ku Klux Klan figures and swinging light bulbs. There was a YouTube aesthetic here - perhaps stemming from budgetry limitations - that rather undermined the effectiveness of others. Corporate PR gloss doesn't come cheap.

The blandness of the New Left - impregnably smug, impeccably coiffed and upholstered in incomprehensible jargon - creates a smooth, all-reflecting surface that simply doesn't give the purchase for this kind of satire. It's telling that the most successful sketches - Barnaby Joyce as a used car salesman, Gerard Henderson arguing with his local video store - are of the rough-hewn conservatives.

Gillies's impersonations don't always hit the mark either. Rudd is reduced to a pout, Abbott to a pair of Billy McMahon ears, and Julia Gillard - the least successful of all - is a spinsterish school teacher with "man hands" brazening out her secondary role as Rudd's henchwoman.

The portrayal of Bolt made me reflect that parody always includes a modicum of homage. Rundle's script made Bolt seem the most intelligent of the lot: its scathing caricature of left-wing inner-city suburbanites possessed a wit Bolt's columns signally lack.

The most mystifying - nay, bizarre - was Hitchens, who tells a meandering Boys Own story of meeting Osama Bin Laden in the Hindu Kush (didn't I read something like that in Robert Fisk's book The Great War for Civilisation?) and finishes with an account of being raped by Arabs. Which is why, he declaims, it was right to invade Iraq.

Hitchens as Lawrence of Arabia? Well, maybe - at a stretch - there's something in that, but here it's just a cheap punchline. And those allusions - if that's what they are - have no force at all in the format of sketch satire.

None of this is helped by Aidan Fennessy's static direction. Rundle and Gillies's last collaboration, The Big Con, featured Eddie Perfect crooning a series of cabaret numbers ("Don't be so damn September 10!") and was a lot more dynamic. Here the switching from lectern to screen gets monotonous and most of the set is simply flashy decor.

For those who have enjoyed the Gillies-Rundle combo before, this is a disappointing outing. It's a bad sign when the program is funnier than the show.

This review is in today's Australian.

Godzone, by Guy Rundle, directed by Aidan Fennessy. Set and costumes Shaun Gurton, lighting design by Matt Scott, sound design by Darrin Verhagen. With Max Gillies, Melbourne Theatre Company @ the Sumner Theatre, MTC Theatre, until January 17.