My Brilliant Career, Melbourne Theatre Company, Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra Theatre, 7-15 Mar (and subseqently Sydney and Wollongong)

 

Five years after Belvoir's somewhat similar non-musical adaptation (down to sharing a lot of the same doubling and also having a piano on stage), the MTC's musical version shows up. There's some different points of emphasis - being a musical, the romance plot gets a lot more stage time here (being helped by Raj Labade's efortless charisma as Harry Beecham and his pure chemistry, in this case with understudy Melaine Bird as Sybylla) and some of the class questions that come up in the M'Swat section of the story seem comparitivley raced through on the way to the finale - but it's still Miles Franklin's classic story of a young woman emerging out of 19th century Australia on the way to finding herself and her options. Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant's book takes the first person narrative of Franklin's novel and gives us a heroine who's simultaneously highly willed and befuddled as she emerges into adulthood over the course of a few years. The score by Matthew Frank and Bryant runs high on self-empowerment-ballads and is performed largely by the cast who fade in and out of supporting roles in between time on percussion, guitar, keyboard and double-bass. 

Marg Howell's set of an area of outback scrub that can upgrade to the grand mansion Caddagat and downgrade to the scrubby M'Swat farm, and she costumes the performers in adaptable outfits that feel part-turn-of-the-century and part now. The production moves swiftly and cleverly across the runtime in a stylish, capable production from Director Anne-Louise Sarks, and it's difficult not to adore Sybylla and her awkward launch into adulthood.