Scandalously funny

EIGHTY years before Aaron Sorkin's TV series The Newsroom there was The Front Page, a stage sitcom with a jet black border.

His Girl Friday

EIGHTY-odd years before Aaron Sorkin's romcom drama The Newsroom, there was The Front Page, a stage sitcom with a jet black border.

Scripted by a pair of Chicago journalists, it told the story of the rush to hang a cop killer to ensure the re-election of an incompetent sheriff and corrupt mayor.

Or, more accurately, the play told how an ace reporter, Hildy, saved the day by exposing their shenanigans. With Lee Tracy as leading man, The Front Page was a Broadway hit in 1928.

Howard Hawks gave the story a screwball twist in his 1939 film adaptation, His Girl Friday, which starred Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. In this version, Hildy became Hildegard, a fox among the newshounds. As in the original, Hildy's publisher boss Walter stops at nothing to prevent Hildy from leaving The Record to get married. The twist in this version is that Walter is Hildy's ex-husband.

Playwright John Guare had two cracks at rewriting the play, first for London's National Theatre ten years ago and again for Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island last year. This most recent version, set on the eve of World War 2, is the one performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company. It skillfully repackages the story so that it still surprises and delights, no matter how familiar you are with any earlier version.

Guare dials up the gallows humour to 11. It's rough, dirty and totally un-PC. Jews, Polacks, Chinks, Krauts and "tarts" are all in the line of fire. Hildy excepted, the journos and publishers are no less worthy of contempt than the men they're attempting to expose.

They're a bunch of "crummy hobos" whose motto is "report it enough and it becomes the truth". They literally hound a girl to her death.

Turning corruption and genuine evil into humour is an uneasy stretch at the best of times. And there are moments in this production (frantically directed by Aidan Fennessy) where the so-called good guys are as cartooned as Top Cat's Officer Dibble.

On the plus side, the 20 individual characters in the play (it has a cast of 16) are remarkably well-defined, far more so than in Howard Hawks' film.

The casting of Pamela Rabe (Hildy) opposite Philip Quast (Walter) promises more than it delivers. Both are impeccable individually, but they don't quite generate the crackling energy one would expect from thwarted lovers. As Hildy's mother-in-law-to-be Mrs Baldwin, Deidre Rubenstein is utterly formidable. In a cameo role, she roars on stage like a hurricane. Her tirades are perfectly controlled.

His Girl Friday is engrossing, and often scandalously funny. And at almost three hours long, the time raced by, which is no mean feat.

His Girl Friday
Adapted by John Guare. Melbourne Theatre Company. Playhouse, the Arts Centre

Tickets: $56-$99. Bookings: [phone] or online. Season ends September 15.