Kieran Butler - Collingwood Club Therapist: Melbourne International Comedy Festival

A blessed coincidence had the audience spellbound on Good Friday. Collingwood’s Retreat Hotel offered a ‘host’ of a different kind when, a few nights before Easter Sunday, I would be witness to the hallow word of (what is arguably) Melbourne’s first religion: football.

Unable to put blasphemy aside, Kieran Butler’s Collingwood: Club Therapist is an ode to the crucifixion of ‘the Cous’, and then some. About ten percent Collingwood therapy and ninety percent Ben Cousins rock opera, no one in the audience, including myself, seemed to mind that this was the case.

Butler’s 2006 Collingwood Ruined My Life season captured the die-hard hearts of the club’s supporters and haters alike. In 2009, with the singer-songwriter narrative, Butler launches the show with Bangles classic Manic Monday, only with the context appropriate lyricism of ‘just another Mad Monday’.

From there he starts his non-discriminating rant, taking swipes at the likes of Eddie McGuire, the public relations nightmare otherwise known as Sam Newton, Alan Didak, Heath Shaw and even the unassuming, front-row Collingwood fans themselves. Needing therapy to heal his own obsessive-compulsive behaviours (such as Collingwood event hosting), Butler reports to the audience the ingenious strategic plan decided on during Collingwood FC’s 3030 Summit: ‘Buy Clubs not Pubs’.

Not wasting time, twenty minutes in Butler was announcing the main event; with the briefest of interludes, the-show-within-a-show began. The Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack prepares the audience for mayhem and it’s clear that ‘Ben Cousins – A Rock Opera’ is cashing in on the great sports scandal storytelling successes of Casey Benetto’s Shane Warne The Musical.

Matt Walsh (not the swimmer) introduced the juiced up, sex-god Cousins as a Christ-like figure mounted on the cross, much to the audiences’ roaring approval. In a meeting of two sporting elites linked by drugs, Michelle Wilson doubled as Jelena Dokic and the ‘orchestra’, offering violin solos throughout the show. Butler sang the narrative just right of stage and spun the tale of a man (Cousins) not wrongly, but rightly crucified in the media and wrongly lusted over by men, women, and several Victorian football clubs.

The ensemble put in a strong first couple of quarters. Momentum was lost in the last term in with refining needed, and a re-consideration of the laboured and lengthy dialogue between characters Andrew Demetriou and Michael Fitzpatrick. Ironically, Demetriou is notoriously uninteresting anyway – believe me when I say it’s somewhere between painful and excruciating to watch him reel out name after badly-pronounced name on Brownlow Medal Night.

It’s not hard to reason that a decent amount of prior knowledge is desirable for such a show. It therefore may not have been the brightest idea to bring my French-born friend to an ALF-centric show, but she later commented that the physical and textual humour was often accessible. But let’s be honest – who’s talking intelligence in reference to a Jesus-Christ-like, drug-taking, ‘Such is Life’ tattoo-wearing football player anyway?

Kieran Butler - Collingwood Club Therapist: Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Running until 24 April
Fri 9pm (except Fri 17 6.30pm), Sat 11th 9pm, Sun 5th & 12th at 7.30pm
The Retreat Hotel
226 Nicholson St, Abbotsford
Brisbane v Collingwood special pre-match show: Friday 17 April