Tony Abbott as Darth Vader: just one of this year’s spoofs in STC’s great political satire.

As I trudge down the seemingly never-ending boardwalk of the Walsh Theatre, I find myself wishing Sydney Theatre Company would put in a bike track to speed things along. When I finally reach the aptly named The Bar at the End of the Wharf (as difficult to get to as Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe), I suggest to Phillip Scott – writer, musician and performer with The Wharf Revue – that we petition Clover Moore to install one. He laughs. “Clover is a doer. So many people criticise her but she does things.”

Still, the bicycle-riding former Lord Mayor of Sydney didn’t escape lampoon in last year’s Wharf Revue, the annual touring comedy show that has become an Australian institution of hot-off-the-press political satire and always ends Sydney Theatre Company’s year with a chuckle.

This year, the irreverent trio – Phillip Scott, Drew Forsythe and Amanda Bishop (the latter’s drawling Julia Gillard impersonation now an established tradition in itself) are joined by fresh recruit Josh Quong Tart in Red Wharf: Beyond the Rings of Satire. For the first time, the...