Head of the class
Is Chris Lilley destined to be the new king of cringe comedy?
Last Updated: Thursday, November 6, 2008 | 5:04 PM ET
By Flannery Dean, CBC News
Australian writer, actor and musician Chris Lilley plays multiple roles, including the egomaniacal high school teacher Mr. Gregson, in the mockumentary TV series Summer Heights High. (HBO/Astral Media) Chris Lilley has been called the Aussie Ricky Gervais, but frankly, he brings a little more to the party. Lilley is a quadruple threat: a writer, satirist, musician and elastic comic character actor who disappears into his often monstrous, sometimes heartbreaking characterizations with Peter Sellers-like ease. In fact, when it comes to stirring up controversy, Lilley gives Sacha Baron Cohen a run for his money. Hooray for HBO, then, because the Aussie star is coming to America: Lilley’s provocative series Summer Heights High makes its North American debut on Nov. 9.
As successful as it was controversial in Australia — where it originally aired in 2007 — the mock-doc Summer Heights High purports to record the goings-on at an Aussie public school over the course of one term. Lilley, who created and wrote the show, plays the three central characters: Mr. Gregson (or “Mr. G”), the school’s egomaniacal drama teacher; Ja’mie King, a 16-year-old “private school girl”; and 13-year-old Jonah Takalua, a Polynesian outcast who can’t read, sit still or stay out of trouble.
For Lilley, high school provides endless material for satire. In the eight 30-minute episodes that make up Summer Heights High’s first season, he manages to land a joke on every hot-button topic going: racism, incest, rape, bullying, child abuse, teen drug-use, the enduring class war, teenagers with Down syndrome. With the exception of cannibalism, Summer Heights High leaves no taboo unspoken.
Lilley started out as a standup comic, and spent a season on an Aussie sketch comedy show called Big Bite. In 2005, he wrote and performed in the six-part mockumentary series We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year (which also featured Ja’mie King). The effort won Lilley awards from the Australian Film Institute and garnered him his first Logie (akin to the U.S. Emmy).
Another of Lilley's characters in Summer Heights High is Ja'mie, a snobby female student. (John Tsiavis/HBO/Associated Press) Lilley’s interest in the absurd horrors of small-scale social reality lends itself to comparisons with Ricky Gervais, known for taking on the minutiae of working life in The Office and Extras. But as a performer, Lilley has more in common with Sacha Baron Cohen, the provocateur behind Da Ali G Show and the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit of Glorious Kazakhstan. Like Cohen, Lilley inhabits his creations.
Vain, self-absorbed and completely indifferent to the feelings of his students and fellow teachers, Mr. G treats his classroom like a stage. He doesn’t teach drama, he performs it. In every episode, he’s either singing, dancing or workshopping bizarre scenes (“Grandma’s been raped”) for the kids. He also has a habit of discussing his ridiculously inappropriate original compositions, like Tsunamarama, a musical inspired (!) by the tsunami of 2004 and set to the music of Bananarama. (Yes, it’s a one-man show.) One quirk Mr. G shares with David Brent (Gervais on The Office) is that he’s convinced he’s a first-class entertainer stalled in a third-rate profession. “You’ve got an industry-level entertainment professional for the price of a teacher,” he tells us.
Fans of Waiting for Guffman may see something of Corky St. Clair (played by Chistopher Guest) in Mr. G’s surplus self-worth and peculiar creativity. In one episode, Mr. G writes a jaunty musical about the drug overdose of a student; another time, he lobbies to have a 10,000-seat centre for performing arts built to serve his talents. Mr. G. is the most recognizable comic type on the show, but his familiarity makes him no less amusing. His insane song lyrics provide many of the show’s best laughs and his crimes against political correctness — particularly with the special-ed kids — are a testament to Lilley’s fearlessness.
Ja’mie (pronounced “Ja-may” — though only by her, oddly enough) is Lilley’s opportunity to “frock up” (i.e. don ladies dress), Monty Python-style. Kitted out in a public school uniform, a long, auburn wig and lip gloss, Lilley plays the 16-year-old girl more convincingly than a 33-year-old man should be able to. He distils her self-consciousness in two gestures: incessant hair twirling/flipping and a coy tilt of the head. But there’s nothing camp or winking about Lilley’s portrayal of Ja’mie, which skewers a certain type of teenage nightmare — the rich bitch. Privileged, silly and cruel, Ja’mie is a private school girl serving a public school term at Summer Heights High. Horrified by her lowly surroundings, she divides humanity into “fugly poor people” and “rich hot people,” and blurts out her offensive convictions with the same frequency that she exclaims “that’s so random” and “oh my god.”
Ja’mie and Mr. G operate with the same smug cluelessness of Baron Cohen characters like Borat (the anti-Semitic Kazakh) and Bruno (his over-the-top Austrian fashion reporter). But where Cohen goes after big game — showing up politicians, intellectuals and celebrities in an effort to exorcise the culture — Lilley is more like Gervais, targeting racism, narcissism, stupidity and unkindness in the work-a-day domestic sphere.
In Summer Heights High, Lilley also takes on the role of Jonah, a delinquent student. (John Tsiavis/HBO/Associated Press) At the heart of the show fidgets ADHD-afflicted Jonah Takalua, an “at-risker” who at 13 still can’t read. Jonah is of Polynesian descent, and his ethnicity makes him an outsider. Originally from Tonga, he’s called a “fob” by some of his schoolmates, who decorate his locker with racist graffiti. Abrasive, explosive and possessed of the kind of volcanic energy only a teenage boy can possess, Jonah is funny, but his situation is not. Poor, motherless and tossed around by a thuggish dad, Jonah’s circumstances make him the show’s emotional centre. There’s an undercurrent of racism to teachers’ dealings with Jonah, and the school’s inability to deal with him compassionately or fairly is heartbreaking. “I worry that we as a school aren’t doing him much good,” sighs the kindly Mrs. Palmer, one of his teachers. To this viewer at least, the entire series seems to organize itself in service of this subtle but significant revelation.
As a species of cringe comedy, Summer Heights High can proudly stake its claim alongside The Office and Da Ali G Show. Gifted and bold, Lilley merges satire and drama exceedingly well. In controversy he locates pathos, a feat few others manage without seeming maudlin. Whether or not Lilley will enjoy the kind of international stardom of Gervais or Baron Cohen is anyone’s guess. But the quality of Summer Heights High indicates he’s entitled to it.
Summer Heights High premieres on HBO Canada on Nov. 9.
Flannery Dean is a writer based in Toronto.
