#KWANDA, MICF, Melbourne Town Hall

"Q and A" is one of the more irritating programs on TV. Presented as a chance for the public directly to question politicians and other public figures, in the end it becomes a show about people avoiding saying anything other than their normal boring set pieces. It's an exercise in avoiding the truth more than in getting any of it.

#KWANDA breaks that fairly quickly - it's an episode of Q and A where, at some point, everybody on the panel, including the moderator, breaks and starts to rant about what they're really thinking. It's brutal, it's funny, it's disturbingly familiar, it pokes holes in every political sacred cow that's out there, and it's an absorbing 70 minutes of theatre. It's mostly a triumph of Tom Ballard's writing and, to some extent, some of the acting (in particular Emily Taheny as the Labour party representative disappointed by her party one too many times, Geraldine Hickey as the Tasmanian-says-it-like-she-sees-it-moron and Michelle Brasier as the right-on musician who unfortunately has never actually thought about any of her political positions beyond the easiest slogan) The staging is pretty basic (just one big desk with the cast largely behind it), but if the current state of politics needs an exorcism, this feels like the big comic one that allows you to laugh at things that have been making you internally scream for way too long.