The Musical of Musicals (the Musical), Everyman Theatre, ACT Hub, 17-25 October

 It's been 12 years since we last joined a quartet of actors and a pianist to tell the same plot 5 times in 5 different styles, and while we have one new actor in Will Collett and a decade's wear and tear means that Jarrad West is now performing Bob Fosse inspired choreography in a knee brace, it's still mostly the show I reviewed back then. It's a more-or-less loving tribute to musical theatre storytelling, in the style of Rogers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb, with the more loving attention paid to the first two and the last one and the more satiric barbs hitting Herman and Lloyd Webber, the gags coming thick and fast throughout and using five variations of the same simple plot of "she can't pay the rent, the landlord wants the rent, the grand dame gives inspirational advice, the dashing hero comes up with the rent at the last minute".

Hannah Ley's return to Canberra is, of course, a triumph, given everything she did when she was here was a triumph and her skills have not dropped one iota in the last decade or so. As the various aspects of ingenue June, from petulant country girl, neurotic new yorker, lisping simpleton, ambitious diva or ambinguously-chicago-berlin-dive-bar dancing girl, she's perfection in all of them. Similarly perfect are Louiza Blomfeld as grand dame Abby, whose advice whether stoic, drunken, spectacular, brooding or Kurt-Weill-ian is always welcome; new entrant Will Collett fitting right into whatever's needed from cocky cowboy to dimwitted nephew to slutty dancing boy, and Jarrad West enjoys various delights from dream ballet to inconveniently stopping swivel chair to a spectacular entrance look to a very fun cape to a startlingly suggestive harnesss arrangement in an OTT german-ish accent. Duncan Driver pops up from the corner now and then to narrate to perfection, filling in where the budget can't. 

Nick Griffn accompanies it all in high style on piano/keyboard with aplomb, and all in all it looks mabye just that little bit fresher than it did a dozen years ago, played confidently with maximum ridiculousness for a fun, silly, spectacular night out. 

A Chorus Line, Free-Rain Theatre, The Q, 30 September – 19 October 2025

 

(photo by Janelle McMenamin)

"A Chorus Line" hit the nerve of Broadway in the mid 70s, with its take on dancing as both a passion and as a profession, using the device of an audition where the director asks for an intrusively large amount of personal information to dive deep into the lives of 17 auditionees for an 8-person dancing chorus. It talks about how the passion is nurtured, both in joy of the achievement (Mike's "I can do that") and in escape from a messy home life (Sheila, Maggie and Bebe's "At the Ballet"), getting into how the profession gives them body dysmorphia (Connie's "4 foot 10" and Val's "Dance 10 Looks 3"), giving us a chance to know them all as individuals, before a finale where they all join in an immaculate, identical chorus of parts in a director's whole vision. It's very much drawn from the 70's encounter-group movement (it originated as a series of taped workshops, making it one of two musicals drawn largely from verbatim material opening this week, between this and "Come from Away"), and the mix of deep emotions and glib joking in the dialogue by James Kirkwood Jr and Nicholas Dante is a very 1970s broadway phenomenon, albiet one that in its original production ran from 1975 to 1990, making it at the time the longest running broadway show ever (since outrun by "Cats", "The Lion King", "Phantom of the Opera", "Les Mis", "Wicked" and  the 90s "Chicago" revival, ironic given "Chorus Line" dominated the attention during "Chicago"s initial run). 

Free-Rain's production is directed and choreographed by Michelle Heine who uses a choreographer's eye to create strong stage pictures for the story to play out in, supporting the performers as they transition in and out of dance as part of the storytelling (there's an additional credit of "acting consultant" for Isaac Gordon, so I'm not sure exactly how this worked in the rehearsal room but certainly the performers embody their roles with skill and care). Craig Johnson's 12 part orchestra underpins the production with a strong brassy Broadway sound, with moments of delicacy where required in "At the Ballet" and the ballad "What I did For Love" handled well too. I'd normally pick out the performers for individual praise but in a show with 19 prlincipals that would make this unbearably long - let's just say they each bring out the individual soul of their characters with skill and power, performing their humanity strongly. 

Zac Harvey's lighting design is precise and skilled, giving us firm beams down on each cast member in isolation as the nerve-wracking auditions begin and letting the space widen for groups to assemble. Telia Jansen's sound design balances a big brassy orchestra and individual voices well, getting the vital lyrics across articulately and giving us a well-scaled sound. 

This is a chance to see a legendary phenomenon on stage and to see a local cast at the top of their game execute one of the classics. 

Trent Dalton's Love Stories, a QPAC / Brisbane Festival production, Canberra Theatre, 24-27 September - subsequent tour to Darwin Entertainment Centre (2 – 4 October) and HOTA Gold Coast (9 – 11 October).

 A writer sits in a public square asking people to tell him about their love stories. A simple premise, played here with a mix of storytelling, video, and choreography, looking at all types of love (romantic, familial, friendships, even self-actualisation). It's a technically sophisticated telling of these stories, beginning with live video of the audience and various written declarations from the audience of their definition of love. We're introduced to the writer (Jason Klarwein), and the location, a busy pedestrian mall in Brisbane, where various regulars approach the writer with their stories or where their story is pulled out of them - with stories mixing from being told directly the audience, playing out told directly to a wandering camerman (Anthony Dyer) or in a couple of instances just played on the big screen on the back of the stage. The stories are tied together by a framing device about the writer's own relationship with his wife (Anna McGahan) but the heart and the soul of the show is some immactulate ensemble work from the cast - including the radiant Valerie Bader, the warmly yearning Bryan Proberts, the stoicly strong Kirk Page, the joyous Will Tran, the heart-rending Ngoc Phan and the warm movements between Jacob Watton and Hsin-Ju Ely. 

It's spectacularly well technically managed, with life editing and effects work from video systems tech Josh Braithwaite, and uses the full size of the Canberra theatre stage better than a lot of attempts to put plays on the bigger theatre - often plays can get swallowed whole by the space which lives more comfortably with concerts, but this one manages to fill the theatre to the back row with heart, soul and theatrical skill. If it's very much a Queensland story put on tour, well, all universal stories are local stories at their heart, and the specifics make the universal elements stand out more. Director Sam Strong and adapter Tim McGarry integrate the combination of spectacle and human moments well, with the assistance of choreographer Nerida Matthaei. It's simultaneously the simplest posisble thing - storytelling between cast and audience - and utilising the finest of modern tech to do that, and it never trips over its feet once in doing that.

I Watched Someone Die on Tiktok, Canberra Theatre Centre New Works, Courtyard Studio, 19-21 Sept

 

Charlotte Otton's solo show is a one hour dive into the extremes of social media - how a young woman growing up in a social media age has been affected by exposure to extreme images of life, death, trauma and sexuality. For someone around 15 years older than her, it's a reflection of all our worst fears of the web (and I say that as someone currently typing this review onto the web, who's aware that I wouldn't be doing this on a regular basis if the web didn't exist, and I've been pretty directly told by traditional media owners that I wouldn't be hired by them because I don't hold a relevant degree, just ... you know, several decades of being an audience, reading theatrical literature, and writing this stuff... no, I'm not bitter at all, how dare you suggest that). 

Back to Otton's show for a second - she sells her material with precision, singing, embodying, narrating and trauma-dumping like a demon. It's a tight show, circling its point and provoking all kinds of thoughts while the multimedia screens play a curated set of material from social media that merely hint at the level of 

There is a wider debate about whether social media is just the same sins that always existed with the barriers removed - the salaciousness of reporting on Jack the Ripper in the 19th century, for example, is from the same source as a modern true-crime reporting on any violent act today - but it's certainly true that the guardrails of editing and control are off. And reckoning with the implications of that is a big topic that Otton explores with precision and skill. 

Lend Me A Tenor, Free-Rain Theatre, ACT Hub, 17-27 Sept

(photo by Janelle McMenamin)

 Ken Ludwig's 1986 farce was a retro charmer even at its first productions - set in the 30s in a grand opera company in Cleveland, where two tenors, a stressed impresario, a demure ingenue, a wife, an ambitious soprano, a daffy dame, and a fanboy bellhop all collide over the course of one long afternoon and the following night. I've enjoyed it for many years -on tour in 1993 in Wollongong with Stuart Wagstaff, Rowena Wallace and Maggie Kirkpatrick, working backstage on Rep's 2006 run with Steph Roberts, Colin Milner and Andrew Kay, and now back in the audience almost 20 years later. It's still a delightful romp, using the Feydeau formula of people in lavish clothing chasing each other around from the most primal of emotions - lust, expediency, wrath, rage, and fear. 

In Cate Clelland's production, it's in the hands of a master. Timing is perfect to hit every laugh, with a cast game for everything and a set and costumes that are the peak of era-appropriate chic. Farce is the kind of thing that can easily fall off the rails if the audience has a moment to think "hey, wouldn't they do something else if they thought about that for a second..." so the answer is to go full throttle and get the performers doing something at all times to avoid thinking about it too much. And given everything that the performers are doing is delightful, it's easy to forget about any plot holes. 

Central to the production is John Whinfield as the sweet-natured Max, the dogsbody who rises through circumstance to become a conquering hero - Whinfield is sweetness personified, an underdog we're desperate to see come through and one we celebrate the triumph of. Around him is Michael Sparks doing some great seething as the constantly-stressed impressario Henry Saunders, most of the rage kept under for as long as possible before sudden explosions. Maxine Beaumot has the right mix of sweet-natured and inner determination as the not-entirely-innocent-but-we-don't-mind ingenue, Christina Falsone brings Italian passion and fire to the role of Maria, William "Wally" Allington brings a sweet nature to the slightly egotistical tenor Tito, Meaghan Stewart is all the right kinds of sultry vamp as Diana, Sally Cahill is deligthfully scatterbrained as the socialite chair of the opera, and Justice-Noah Malfitano is just the right kind of irritant as the sarcastic bellhop. (Whinfield and Allington are both also required to sing a duet from Verdi's "Don Carlos" to convince us they both would pass as opera-suitable tenors and both pass that test with flying colours)

Fourty years after it first premired, this is still a charmer - after rewrites to change the opera from "Otello" to "Pagliacci" (thus removing unfortunate blackface), a sequel, a musical and a genderswap to become "Lend me a Soprano", the bones of the original still hold true and in its current incarnation it should be bringing delight to audiences at the Hub for the next week-and-a-bit. 

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.