Lizzy, D'Arcy and Jane, Canberra Repertory Society, Canberra Rep Theatre, 4-20 Sept

 

Joanna Norland's play looks at the creation of "Pride and Prejudice" in the context of Jane Austen's own romantic entanglements, with Lizzie's fate in her novel varying as Jane's own pursuit of love refuses to run smoothly. On the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth, it's probably worthwhile having some kind of celebration of her, but unfortunately the play itself is a little pallid - Austen comes across here as a somewhat nervy character, who seems to be very easily influenced by her characters into letting them have their own fate, rather than the behind-the-scenes mastermind plotting everything intricately together. Still, Alexandra Pelvin's production gives it a solid production, empire-line-dresses and stylish scenery and all, in a production that has some liveliness in some of the performances even when it doesn't perhaps entirely exist in the script. 

Dylan Hayley Rosenthal as Lizzie has a good wilful cynicism as the character requires, with a certain twinkle in her eye. Sterling Notley manages a tricky trio of roles as an amiable Bingley, a snotty younger Harris and a somewhat more vulnerable older one, and various modes of odiousness as Mr Collins. And Rachel Hogan drips imperious power in incarnating the dreaded Lady Catherine De Bourgh. 

Eliza Gulley frocks the ladies and frock-coats the gentlemen appropriately, and Kayla Ciceran gives a nicely open design for story to take place. 

I've liked some of Rep's other attempts at Austen but unfortunately, here, the play itself wasn't really enough to hold my attention - Austen's writing remains fascinating but, at least here, her personal life just doesn't have the same draw for me. For others it might.

The Cadaver Palaver: A Bennett Cooper Sullivan Adventure, Bare Witness Theatre Company, Canberra Theatre Centre New Works, Courtyard Studio, 12-14 Sept

 

Christopher Samuel Carroll has prepared a delightful one-man tribute to Victorian adventurers, with dramatic twists, battles, secrets and saucy seductions aplenty, delivered by Carroll with vocal and physical dexterity as he takes us from far eastern dens of iniquity to the backstreets of Edinburgh with brisk efficiency.

To a certain extent this is a simple vehicle for Carroll to show off his skills and he serves himself well - relishing his words with linguistic glee, and using various physical gags, intense pacing and a spectacular moustache to tell his tale. It's a convoluted conspiratorial narrative where ... well, some secrets need to be kept, but I can safely say that Cadavers and Palavers certainly feature high on the agenda.  Sullivan gets himself into and out of all manner of sticky situations along the way to a suitably dramatic conclusion, by way of a dramatic opening and several dramatic confrontations along the way.

 Carroll is assisted by nothing more than a set of around five Persian carpets on the ground and some sympathetic lighting by Ash Basham, operated by Riley Whinett. With nothing more than a dashing brown suit, a cane and a largely bare stage, he conjures up a whole victorian world of intrigue, adventure and suspense with aplomb, and I hope for further Bennett Cooper Sullivan adventures (or whatever else strikes Carroll's fancy) in the future. 

In the Heights, Marriner Group and Joshua Robson Productions, Comedy Theatre (and later at HOTA Brisbane), 1 Aug-6 Sept.

 

Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2008 Broadway debut is inevitably overshadowed by the show that came next, but it's a fun depiction of a place and milieu on the corner of a Washington Heights neighbourhood - deliberately somewhat small-scale as we follow the day-to-day lives one summer of a couple of Latin American characters dealing with money troubles, degraded infrastructure and urban blight. This production, grown from a run at the Hayes in 2018 to runs at the Opera House and previous tours along the NSW central coast, has a strong emphasis on the dance elements of the show, constantly moving from beginning to end under Amy Campbell's strong choreographic hand. While the plot is a somewhat familiar slice-of-life as various characters dream, romance and handle rising temperatures on the street, the execution is sharp and skillful.

Unfortunately, i was at a performance where understudy Jerome Javier was on for Ryan Gonzalez as the lead, Usnavi - Javier is undoubtedly a skilled performer and can handle the technical requirements of the role well, spitting out Miranda's dense lyrics clearly and precisely - but they're also a younger performer and the role really requires someone who can give the impression of having lived in a rut for a while, and the fit is not quite precise enough to make them a seamless replacement.   Elsewhere, the regular performers are strong - from the ever-dancing ensemble to the gossiping trio at the beauty parlour played by Olivia Vasquez, Vanessa Menjivar and Tamara Foglia Castaneda, to scene-stealing Richard Valdez as the gleeful Piragua Guy and Dayton Tavares' smooth moves as Grafitti Pete. The ensemble sell joy in numbers like "96,000", the act one climax "Blackout" and the celebratory "Carnival Del Barrio" and also emotional depth in Abuela Claudia's "Pacience Y Fe", and deliver the meat of the show well. 

Director Luke Joslin keeps the show on a fairly simple staging, leaving space on the stage for dance to explode, and Mason Browne's set design is a similarly simple design adapted for maximum utility. It's a solid production rather than a revalatory one, mostly serving as a vehicle for its perofmers and its choreographer which both drive well. 

Kimberly Akimbo, State Theatre Company of South Australian and Melbourne Theatre Company, Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, 26 Jul-30 Aug

 When David Lindsay-Abaire decided to musicalise his 2001 play in 2021, he had the advantage of having previously worked with composer Jeanine Tesori on the "Shrek" musical, before Tesori went on to win best original score for "Fun Home" (she'd later win again for this musical). Changing technologies means that his play, previously a contemporary work, was now a period piece, and the musical doubles down on the late-90s-ness of the story, using a daggy suburban high school and its antendees to broaden out his central gimmick of a 15-turning-16 year old girl with a rapid aging disorder that means she looks like the 61-year-old Marina Prior, and her tricky relationships with her disreputable family. The musical introduces a quartet of high show-choir geeks to the cast but otherwise tracks pretty closely, including subplots about Kimberly's cheque-fraud-committing aunt,  her not-entirely-responsible parents and the boy in her class she falls in love with. 

Mitchell Butel's production manages to wrangle a small scale story onto the somewhat broad space of the Arts Centre Playhouse without too much damage, and manages to keep Kimberly central even when there are so many more colourful personalities jockeying for attention. It's not the smoothest production - the costumes and set lead towards a tendency to caricature more than perhaps is wise, but in centering Prior it knows where the humanity is in the story and lets her reactions guide us through to a joyous conclusion. 

At this point in her career, Prior could be resting her laurels in a series of comfortable revivals but it's good to see her using her intense likability in a new show that trades off that in interesting ways - playing a child in an adult body with such vulnerability yet inner knowledge that we take her and her journey to our hearts. Casey Donavan as the disreputable aunt Debra is an energetic force of nature - we've known for 24 years she's a powerhouse vocalist but her comedy sense is spot on too. Christine Whelan Browne as Kimberly's mother showcases a likeable empty-headedness in contrast to her baddy in "Bloom" earlier this year, and Nathan O'Keefe as Kimberly's dad has all the right twitchy anxiety moves. Darcy Wain as Kimberly's anagram-obsessed geek love interest is also a sweetheart, and makes it easy to understand why she goes for him. And the showchoir quartet of Marty Alix, Allycia Angeles, Alana Iannace and Jakob Rozario showcase a combination of teen desire and inner turmoil as they support Kimberly's narrative.

This is a tender, sweet little story that realises its message in the nicest way in the final moments, while bringing somewhat wild circumstances to vigorous life. Hopefully this should get a later tour and the wider audience it deserves, if for no other reason than to showcase Prior's gently powerful performance - never pushing for affection but bringing us in all the same. 

Beetlejuice, The Musical, Michael Cassel Group and Warner Bros Theatre Ventures, Regent Theatre, til September 11.

 

Adapting Tim Burton's 1988 film into a musical, Scott Brown and Anthony King's script narrows the focus onto the titular Beetlejuice (notoriously only on screen in the movie for 17 minutes) and Lydia Deetz, the Winona Ryder character - making both key actors in the way the Beeetlejucie animated series did, while giving Lydia a strong sung desire to connect to her late mother as an emotional backbone to the story. With Eddie Perfect's songs giving a varied range of material from Lydia's power ballads to a fun back-and-forth duet on "Say my Name" to a bonkers bouncy showtune on "Creepy old Guy", some thoughly character-appropriate costuming from broadway legend William Ivey Long, a set design combined with projection work from David Korins and Peter Nigrini that allows the supposedly simple house set to transform looks instantaneously as the plot requires. 

Eddie Perfect is a weird case of a creator appearing in their own work - in music theatre, we've not seen Tim Minchin appear in "Matilda" or "Groundhog Day" and Kate Miller-Heidke sat out "Muriel's Wedding" - but in many ways it's the perfect mix of performer and material - Perfect's irreverent tunes in his previous cabaret work and in his "Shane Warne" musical suit him as a performer as well, and he taks the reigns and is a suitably chaotic narrator, nemesis and semi-protagonist, keeping us entertained the entire time. Karis Oka matches him, bringing emotional intensity to her solo "Dead Mom" and also playfulness to her dealings directly with Beetlejuice anywhere else, whether trading off with him in "Say My Name" or "That Beautiful Sound" or playing with the ick in "Creepy Old Guy". Elise McCann adds to her stockiple of great solid leads with another thoroughly charming female lead as the coming-into-her-own Barbara Maitland, and Rob Johnson gradutes from a run of utility performer roles like his "Calamity Jane" part to a strikingly dorky, charming Adam Maitland. Erin Clare is a charming weirdo as Delia, and Tom Wren goes from uptight to insane to sympathetic as the role of Charles requires. 

Alex Timbers directs with verve and action for most of the show (though there are a couple of points where the second act gets a bit stuck having to do inevitable plot-stuff to get us through to the finale), and it's a lively fun musical that knows its source and delivers what an audience wants even if it's not letter-perfectly reproducing the original, instead boiling it down to its essence and hitting the core beats while playing around to give us something surprising at the same time. 

Once on this Island, Curveball Creative in association with Hayes Theatre Company, Hayes, 2-31 Aug

 

This is an odd one-  a musical version of a Caribbean retelling of "The Little Mermaid", with emphasis drawn on elements of Caribbean social politics and religious practice. It premiered on Broadway 35 years ago and in this production there's a lot of pacific-island references in the design and some of the choreography. The darker tone of the Hans Christian Andersen original is maintained here - a young woman sacrificing all for the sake of a man who's not worthy of her, while the gods around her make dark bets on her fate. The production does bring across the power of the material, which is Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's score and Ahrens's smooth script, incorporating magic, dance, and tradition. In Brittanie Shipway's production it uses the intimate Hayes stage to create a community and two different worlds of the island, both the small village where heroine Ti Moune grows up, and the grand hotel where the richer side of the island indulges themselves - Nick Pollard's set design uses the tightness of the Hayes to make the set up from what look like found objects, incorporating small elements like slatted windows and a grand gate in as the location gets more sophisticated. Choreographer Leah Howard makes sure the show moves with a mix of pacific islander movement and more traditional dance vocabularly, and absolutely belongs to the cast members. 

There's a great set of performances here too - Thalia Oseceda Santos is a powerhouse as the innocent Ti Moune, passionate and sweet and so fragile we fear for what the world has in store for her - and the quartet of god performers, Godgoorewon Knox's water god Agwe, Paula Parore's bountiful earth goddess Asaka, Cyprinana Singh's romantic goddess Erzuilie and Rebecca Verrier's intimidating god of death Papa Ge, contribute strongly to the storytelling as they impose their will on the world below them. 

There's a warmth to this folk tale even as it pushes the darkness in under the warmth, and we see the legacy of colonialism on a culture in ways that are painful to us as the darker ending emerges out of old divides. It's a gorgeously compiled production and well worth seeing.  

Circle Mirror Transformation, Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, 12 Jul-7 Sep

 

We observe a small class in the middle of the US doing a six-week drama course, consisting entirely of drama exercises- we can tell it's not that successful as the four students include the co-ordinator's husband as a ring-in - and slowly we get insight into them through small moments. Annie Baker's play is precise and builds from the smallest parts - you may think nothing has happened, then suddenly you realise how much you know and have warmed to these people over the course of watching them struggling - through a small view we see the bigger world that these characters bring with them into the class and where they may take it afterwards. 

Rebecca Gibney and Cameron Daddo as the husband-and-wife team may feel like stunt casting from the outside but both absorb well into their characters - Gibney having the right slightly-smug, hippyish vibe, satisfied that her program can help the group even as her exercises wander closer to misguided psychological experimentations, and Daddo as the dropout lawyer who's realising maybe his rebellions never really set him up for the family connections that he craves. Solid also are Nicholas Brown as a lovelorn carpenter clearly looking for a connection, Ahunim Abebe as the resistant teen looking for something more substantial than this class appears to be shows a gentle warming as the time proceeds, and Jessie Lawrence as the somewhat flamboyant Theresa who realises just how much she needs to bring herself back in. 

In a moment like now when all the views from America are huge and impactful, something this small and human-scaled may feel underwhelming - but it's exactly when we need something on a personal scale . Annie Baker's a master of finding truth in small surprising moments and in making lived-in worlds for her characters, and it's the kind of thing that can easily be overlooked but shouldn't be.