Pelican Productions. Musical Theatre Camp and Spotlight. Michael Murray Centre for Performing Arts - Westminster School. 18 Jan 2025.
Pelican Productions theatre camps and Spotlight programs are twenty years old already. Time’s speed is scary.
Directors Jen Frith and Kylie Green marvel in their program notes about the latest production named Twenty in honour of this landmark twentieth, saying it is “nothing short of phenomenal” that it all comes together. True.
The scale of Pelican productions is massive. There are so many talented young performers that their shows are divided into four huge casts so that everyone can have a spotlight.
It’s a talent factory on the grand scale and thank heavens that Westminster School has a really big stage and auditorium to accommodate it all - especially, as on this Twentieth anniversary production, an added vast array of alumni swarmed into the theatre and massed on and around the stage. And they were all wonderful. Love was in the air. So much love.
Pelican achieves all this with its Musical Theatre Camps and Spotlight programs, bringing top entertainers and masters of their arts in to train the upcoming entertainers and theatre workers. Hundreds of people.
The wondrous end product is a mass of young performers up there giving their all. Trained to a tee. Beautifully costumed, well miked... Every single one of them is focused on performance and works as if they are the only one on stage.
This 2025 first big show followed the Pelican productions pattern of excerpts from major popular musicals: a bonanza of hits and big cast numbers.
This critic attended the “Broadway” cast’s Saturday-night performance.
There were not many things to criticise. Mainly it was the tendency towards oversinging, which has become endemic in this era of “Everyone’s Got Talent” shows. Hence, singers who sang rather than belted were standout. A few issues with understanding lyrics but, then again, there were some pretty terrible lyrics. Not all musicals are works of art and one now knows that one never wants to see a full performance of The Great Gatsby Musical. Or &Juliet! (Then again, off the subject, keep an eye out for Romeo + Juliet which is really fresh youth version which is currently packing Broadway with teens.)
Pelican's spectaculars always are a bit overwhelming, and it seems unfair to see only a proportion of the talent in just one of the casts. But that’s how it rolls.
From the Broadway cast’s production, there are quite a few names for which to keep a future look-out.
There’s Sebastian Cox, a phenomenal dancer. There’s Lluka Wadey, outstanding from one of six stunners in Six the Musical. There's Gracie Cheung in Beettlejuice. There’s April Sprules as Annie. There’s Belle Letic as Daisy in Gatsby. There’s Casey Mifsud and Aidan Salmon from Book of Mormon which, incidentally, was delivered as a totally breathtaking opener to the show. The overall showstopper was Finn Green with Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat from Guys and Dolls. He’s a star alumni.
There are the soloists from The Lion King and big tick to the stilt-walking giraffes, albeit the Circle of Life animals were generally a tough call.
Further big ticks to all the techs behind the scenes. Production values were high and the projection sets were extremely effective. Ditto the costumes. Some of the choreography was beyond excellent. The discipline of the performers was copybook. The praise can go on.
Whoever the baritone was who featured in the alumni grand finale was just “wow”. But then again, there was too much to praise. This reviewing job is impossible.
Brava Jen and Kylie. You’re a class act delivering countless class acts.
This state and show biz owes you a lot.
Samela Harris
When: 17 to 19 Jan
Where: Michael Murray CPA
Bookings: Closed
A Christmas Musical. The Flying Elephant Company. Burnside Town Hall. 18 Dec 2024
If anything can do the heart good at Christmas, it is the sight of a new generation bursting not only with ace talent but with a serious oomph of initiative.
Last month we saw Ben Francis waving the future’s flag with his stunning Elton John tribute show for one night only up at the Shedley. Hey, now it’s coming to town.
This month, it’s that award-winning Benji Riggs mounting a wildly ambitious brand-new Christmas musical with and for the young.
He’s hired the super-handy and accessible Burnside Town Hall's nifty theatre space for his season - which comes to the stage after a couple of years of devotion from Benji. It’s a corny pun to say he’s outstanding because he is very tall. But he has been head and shoulders above the crowd since he was a prodigy kid and now, as a young man, he just keeps rising as a multi-talented phenomenon. His past credits are legion: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; The Boy with the Golden Fox; and work with Independent Theatre just this year.
That the inspiration figures in this work are Charles Dickens and Stephen Sondheim shine forth from the show. Yes, it is Dickens-a-la-Riggs with a very neat, foot-tapping Sondheim-esque original score. It all fits together rather nicely, once one stops puzzling about the title. One imagines Book Nooks is just catchy, like the music.
It certainly evoked a vivid and very memorable set design from Adrian Joy - a stage embraced by book-laden bookshelves with a Christmas tree in the middle and, OP, a big armchair corner for the narrator, Seven Parker, the only adult on stage.
The performers all are miked and, while obviously there is not a full orchestra onstage, the excellent sound is indeed orchestrated by writer/director Riggs.
He did not do the excellent choreography, though. He knows a good choreographer when he sees one and this one is Bridget Tran. She has that cast brilliantly drilled. It is a tough little performance space but it is astutely used and the dancing cast is attentive and precise, sharing an infectious look of engagement upon their faces.
The story line is new but also as old as the proverbs. It is the realisation of a granddad's story of secret book spirits animating in a quest to find a little boy’s lost joy. The little boy, beautifully sung by Nemenja Illic, doesn’t get to look happy until the end, of course, but the book spirits reflect all sorts of emotions and are heaps of fun and are exuberantly costumed. Outstanding among them is Sophia Genary, a highly stage-experienced 11-year-old who is clearly going places. Josh Curtis, playing Cecil, also is one to watch. Indeed, full marks to Riggs on the casting: Keira Wubbolts, Harrison James Thomas, Jonathan Snow, Milla Illic, Ava-Rose Graves, and Kushi Choudhari. There are fine and focused performances from each and some marvellous singing. Clearly, everyone has worked really hard, and it has paid off.
Give or take a few inaudible lyrics, Book Nooks is an extremely slick and professional production. It is also bravely mounted at this busy time of the year but it makes for a fabulous pre-Christmas family treat and this jaded old critic loved it to bits and has no reservations in recommending it to one and all - to enhance a really happy Christmas.
Samela Harris
When: 18 to 21 Dec
Where: Burnside Town Hall
Bookings: flyingelephantcompany.com
Independent Theatre. Star Theatres. 29 Nov 2024
Few things in this life are as deeply satisfying as a really good, solid piece of old-school theatre. Or so think many of us. Rob Croser has been delivering this entity in a state of high finesse for years - and at affordable ticket prices. We don’t know how lucky we are.
He’s done it yet again, with designer David Roach ingeniously transforming the old Star Theatre into a very comfortable and believable London flat of the 1950s. Walking in onto the set, which is at the foot of the front row in the Star, took this 60s London flatter right back to that life, replete with its period gas fire and coin-hungry gas meter. Both set and costumes of The Deep Blue Sea are absolutely spot-on.
Hester Collyer has come upon hard times in post-war London, reduced to digs in a converted Victorian mansion the like of which, by rights, would have been hers had she not forsaken her knighted husband and run off with a dashing toy boy. Her mistakes are coming home to roost in this Terrence Rattigan portrait of broken hearts and wasted opportunities. Not even the kind people around her can extinguish her stubborn victimhood.
Through one long day, post unsuccessful cri de cœur with aspirin and gas, she wafts and wallows, dishevelled and in dressing gown, beyond hope or reason.
Hester Collyer is one of theatre’s great melodramatic roles for a seasoned actress, renowned from performances by Googie Withers and Peggy Ashcroft. With his general directorial impeccability, Rob Croser has cast the eminently capable Lyn Wilson in this emotionally exhausting lead role. In thrall, the audience follows the desperate vales, trenches and hysterical highs of her committed characterisation.
There is, of course, a human commonality to her plight and, although one may not like the spoiled hobby-artist, Hester Collyer, one understands her mindset.
She has created a love triangle. Her husband, Sir William, the judge, is still desperately in love with her, but not she with him. She loves the fun-loving drunkard, Freddie Page, a relic of WWII derring do-air combat, now a failed test pilot.
On this crucial day after her birthday, the emotional gambles of her past converge. Everyone comes knocking.
Handsome Freddie is a lovely posh cad, quite perfectly embodied by Patrick Marlin while Chris Bleby stands aloft, fairly literally, as the cuckolded noble husband. His is a beautifully expressive performance and one’s heart breaks for his heartbreak.
The supporting cast uniformly delivers strong and credible performances. Rose Vallen is salt of the earth and commonsense heart of gold as Hester’s landlady and cleaner while Ryan Kennealy and Sophie Livingston-Pearce turn in very entertaining cameos as busybody fellow tenants. Tim Everson very neatly encapsulates the spirit of slightly upper crust decadence in the atmosphere of postwar London hedonism as Freddie’s old school bestie.
Finally, there is Mr Miller, the sad old disgraced German doctor who also has digs at this Ladbroke Gardens address. Mrs Elton, the landlady, knows his and everyone else’s secrets. She almost keeps them. She and Mr Miller provide both physical and philosophical succour for poor Hester, with some of the best lines if this finely wrought play.
Yes, The Deep Blue Sea is very much a period piece. It is precisely dated, and this is part of its significance in the canon of English theatre. The 1950s was an era of damaged people in a bomb-scarred city, of a society trying to put the salve of stiff upper lip upon its war traumas.
While this wonderful Croser production with its splendid Roach set is attracting an audience of older citizenry still with memories of those not so long gone times, it is really a work to which Gen X, Y and Z should be exposed.
While the characters arrayed in the play are of their era, their stereotypes and their places in the cut and thrust of the human predicament are reborn through every generation.
This is a five-star piece of theatre, eminently worth your valuable time.
Samela Harris
When: 29 Nov to 7 Dec
Where: Star Theatres
Bookings: trybooking.com
The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre. 22 Nov 2024
Most Australians remember the Ruth Cracknell/Gary McDonald television series of Mother and Son, penned by Geoffrey Atherden AM. They loved or hated it.
This stage variation on the theme - dotty, forgetful old mum’s challenging relationship with her carer son - is not a familiar “episode” from the series and it has a contemporary setting. Hence, its humour encompasses the very things which drive us all to various stages of dementia right now, things like mobile phones and telemarketing. Who among us cannot relate to these? But, while the play teases laughs from confusion, it also highlights the serious issues of aging and families; the fear of loneliness, the fear of institutionalisation, respite versus admission, the danger of falls and, of course, loyalty and responsibility.
All of those may only be communicated through the credibility endowed by good actors and, as director, the Rep’s respected Jude Hines has roped them in. Penni Hamilton-Smith plays old Mrs Beare. She a seasoned character actor and she tucks this challenging part under her belt with disarming ease and laudable lack of vanity. By the play’s end, she has established the most extraordinarily warm relationship with the audience. It is eating out of her hand, as they say in the classics. And, they whoop her at the curtain call, which, incidentally, has its own idiosyncratic charm.
The two Beare sons are polar opposites and aptly embodied by Stephen Bills as the adored successful dentist and Patrick Clements as the loyal stay-at-home caring carer son. Sub plots give romantic involvements to both men and, hence, the cast includes several well-wrought young female characters, very pleasantly played by Mollie Mooney, Nikki Gaertner Eaton and Jessica Corrie. Children Alifa Willoughby and Harry Bacon appear also as old Maggie Beare’s grandchildren. They are largely seen on a huge TV screen which interestingly doubles as a window on the set, and their zoom interactions tell another whole story about contemporary family life and the trials of technology. The set is generally a bit odd with its see-through front porch, but the furnishings well define the life and taste of a fading retiree.
A number of voices feature off-stage and, among them, Husain Mataza must be credited with a definitive portrayal of classic Mumbai call centre characters.
Mother and Son is a longish show. It is not hilarious and nor is it meant to be. Rather, it is amusing in the vein of touching triste. The high spot of humour is delivered in a gem of a cameo appearance by one Sandy Whitelaw as old folks home resident, Monica.
If people at cross-purposes and manipulative old seniors are your cup of tea in a divertissement of sleekish production values by a great old Adelaide theatre team, this is the play for you.
Samela Harris
When: 22 to 30 Nov
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: adelaiderep.com
Ben Francis Entertainment. One night Only. Shedley Theatre. 21 Nov 2024
What a privilege.
That is my foremost thought on being part of the audience for Ben Francis’s Elton John bio show.
What an immense entrepreneurial outreach it was. A one night only “preview” show, an out-of-town try-out run. And, Wow!
Francis, aged only 24, already is a celebrated name on the Australian entertainment scene for his spiffy The60Four productions, four brilliant singer dancers who met back at school performing vast tropes of 60s pop songs to sell-out houses.
Here, he goes out on his own, but in the company of handpicked creme-de-la creme of his generation in the form of a fabulous band, switched-on techs and back-up gals to die for.
The show shone with the eye for detail and the general finesse of the big time.
Razzle-dazzle lighting and visuals, gorgeous fun costumes all over the place, grand piano downstage with and five-man band on a raised dais... The aesthetic balance was as well planned as the content and the wealth of vivid projections swept the audience into a sense of the big time.
Keyboard man Marco Callisto did the musical direction with Francis, on vocal arrangements of course. The polished band consisted of guitarists Jake and Jason Dawson, Will Burton on sax and James Nisbet on drums. Ray Cullen did the show’s visuals with Ethan Hurn on lights and Craig Williams on sound. Tia Rodger and Trish Francis sorted out the array of costumes which mirrored the Elton John life story while Carla Papa choreographed the show including, outstandingly, the three backup singers - Tia Rodger, Lily Horton-Stewart, and Emma Pool. Now, these dancer/vocalists were a little show of their own, cleverly adding another element of stage action for the audience while enhancing both the music, the spirit, and the narrative. I’ve never seen better presentation of backups. Ever. Carla Papa is sterling. And so of course is Ben Francis in a performance of extreme physicality as well as high focus. His Elton bio script was thorough and enlightening, and also moving. And, as well as carrying the narrative, he performed all the songs in that amazing many-voices of his. Talk about range.
He’s calling out for audience feedback to enhance what is hoped will, deservedly, be a mainstream production of this show.
My twopence might be to somehow share the narration to lighten the load and perhaps cull out a lesser-known song or two, to tighten the length. Otherwise, like the rest of the preview audience, I stand in wild ovation.
Ben Francis is a mighty showbiz force with which to be reckoned.
He will go far.
Samela Harris
When: 21 Nov
Where: Shedley Theatre
Bookings: Closed