Tom Gleisner has been on Australian TV screens for around 40 years (if you include his early D-Generation stuff) though he's only previously been involved in writing for the stage with a co-writing credit on Working Dog's 2014 play "The Speechmaker" (which was simulataneously a sell-out hit for Melbourne Theatre Company and something that the production team decided to never take anywhere else). Still, that kind of media profile tends to jump the queue for production, even in genres which the writer isn't really known for. Gleisner's never written a musical before but the form fits him like a glove - a mixture of sentiment and jokes in a very human story of lives in a retirement home.
He's lucky to have the support of Dean Bryant, who understands the musical form completely - having previously directed "Fun Home" and "Dear Evan Hansen" for STC, he understands how to keep a musical moving and active and visually interesting. In this case, on Dann Barber's set that starts as institutionally bleak and realistic before finding magic places to go later in the show, there's a charming mix of comedy, rhythm, style and humanity in here as we get to know the lives of the residents, the staff and the management over the course of around 105 minutes.
There are three performances at the center of the show - Slone Sudiro as the viewpoint character, Finn, a somewhat hapless aide brought in as a program for cheap work in exchange for a place to live gives him a millennial charm even as the character is frequently out of his depth; Evlyn Kraape as annoyed recent arrival, Rose, who gives the role a touch of edge, rage and mischevous charm; and Christie Whelan Browne as the retirement home Mrs MacIntyre who is brilliantly dislikably condescending, her solo number "Everything I Do" a particualr highlight as she stomps across the stage in tight skirt and high heels, imperious as always. Elsehere in the cast Vidya Makan and Christine O'Neill are a fine pair of nurses showing their experience, John Waters and Jackie Rees sell a sweet late--in-life romantic subplot, Maria Mercedes and John O'May are basically both given one-joke characters but sell their one joke well, and Eddie Muliaumaseali'i plays four different roles without ever losing the distinction between them.
Katie Weston's score has a nicely bouncy style, though little really hangs around in the memory afterwards, it's more stuff that works in the moment. The main reason the show seems to be a musical is to allow a looser sense of reality to get into the plot and to let the characters more distinctly declare their desires in a tune rather than a speech - and that's enough of a reason. If this isn't the Great Australian Musical, it's the Perfectly Acceptable Australian Musical that people should enjoy.
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