Warne steals the show as life and art collide

MELBOURNE: Ever the showman that he is, spin legend Shane Warne stole the limelight at Athenaeum Theatre where he watched the premiere of 'Shane Warne the Musical'.
    
Warne was cheered wildly by the audience when he sat down at the dress circle. And, when he joined Eddie Perfect, who played Warne, and the cast on the stage for the curtain call, the Athenaeum reverberated with his name.
    
"It's quite funny sitting there watching your life in two and half hours. I reckon I look better in my jocks than Eddie does," Warne said.
    
'Shane Warne the Musical' does not so much satirise the leg-spinner. It is genuinely clever, genuinely funny, genuinely affectionate and too madcap to cause more than passing offence, a report in 'The Age' said.
    
Periodically, Warne flinched with embarrassment. Mostly, he clapped and laughed with everyone else.
    
"Whaddya reckon," Warne mouthed at interval to someone he recognised in the celebrity-laden audience. "Not bad, heh?"
    
As life and art became hopelessly entwined, the audience cheered dramatisations as if they were real. The highlight of the first act was a moving paean to the 'ball of the century' in Manchester in 1993 that launched Warne into immortality.
    
The imaginary ball in the theatre spun the wrong way -- it was an off-break -- but that only helped keep the night's absurdity within bounds, the report said.
    
Everyone was laughing at Warne, who was not Warne, but was Warne to a T and so could laugh with Warne. It was Warne, the eternal showman in the theatre, the eternal showman as Warne on the stage.
    
Originally, Warne objected to the show fearing how the makers might have dealt with the scandalous bits of his life, only to endorse it later on.