Bubble Boy, Queanbeyan Players, Belconnen Community Theatre, 14-23 Feb

(photo of Rylan Howard by Damien Magee)

Cinquo Paul and Ken Daurio's screenplay for the 2001 movie "Bubble Boy" led to a film that didn't exactly set the world alight, but did have an early lead role for Jake Gyllenhaal. It's a simple comedic premise of an isolated innocent forced to travel through the world when the girl-next-door he loves goes to Niagra Falls to marry someone else, and by most standards, it would have died there. Except Paul and Daurio wound up writing the "Despicable Me" franchise of movies, allowing their pet project of a musical with songs by Paul to get recorded and have further professional development opportunities. Along the way Paul also got to run the TV show "Schmigadoon" and write all the songs for that spoof of popular musicals - alas the "Bubble Boy" score isn't quite as strong - while those spoofs are specific and delightful, these are more generic and time-serving.

And they have produced a bright bubbly musical, albeit one with two issues - one structural, one character-based. For a story that is really a road story with the titular bubble boy meeting all kinds of eccentric characters on the road, it takes until the end of act one for him to actually get on the road, meaning there's an awful lot of plot squeezed into the second half (on the plus side, it's a show that doesn't suffer from the usual act two problems where there's not enough plot to get to the end). The second is that the female lead really feels very very undefined - she clearly likes our leading man but there's never really a rational explanation for why she agrees to get married to someone else beyond providing motivation for him to finally leave his house and go on the road after her - she is the definition of the "sexy lamp" problem, and while Kay Liddiard is indeed sexy and illuminating in the role, she can't overcome the non-existent motivations in the script. 

Still director Tijana Kovac, musical director Tara Davidson and Choreographer Sally Taylor have produced a bright, fluffy, cartoonish production that skates over most of these issues in the moment with a free-flowing production. Remus Douglas' Costumes, sets and props give a cartoon aesthetic with three periaktoids rotating to give different backgrounds depending on if we're inside, outside or somewhere slightly more specific. And the six-member band plays tightly and skilfully, particularly Lauren Duffy on multiple reeds. 

The cast are a charming lot too - from Rylan Howard's innocent but not entirely naive Jimmy, to Kay Liddiard's tough-on-the-outside-but-tender inside Chloe, Aleisha Croxford's obsessive Mrs Livingston, Andrew Taylor's goofily brutish Mark and Sam Thomson's just-goofy Shawn. The ensemble are a charming bunch of weirdos on the road and sing and perform the choreography with a sense of fun and joy. 

This is a perfectly amiable show - if it doesn't quite live up to the last 3 QP shows which played Belconnen Community Theatre (Keating, Downtown and Next To Normal) it's still a nice night out with a young cast giving joy to the audience