The Boy From Oz

This year Brisbane Arts Theatre is celebrating its 80^th year of production, a milestone in local theatre, and what better way to pop the fizz than a production of Australia’s favourite home-grown musical The Boy From Oz.

The bio-musical about the life of songwriter Peter Allen, who rose from small-town pub entertainer to headlining at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, is the stuff of legend and especially when his life also connected with two of America’s superstar legends, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.

The question around the local theatre traps has been how will a big show like The Boy From Oz fit on the small stage of the Arts Theatre. Well, it does and it does it pretty well indeed. Although the set may not have the grand staircase of the original (simply a grand piano on a rostra up-stage), it made up for any staging inadequacies with splashy and sequinned costumes. The girls in the “I Go To Rio” finale with their skimpy outfits and headdresses looked like they’d just come from Rio’s Carnival.

The Boy From Oz rises or falls by its leading man and fortunately Arts had a genuine triple talent in the role. William Toft, a former Princeton in last year’s Avenue Q, can not only sing, dance and act, he can also play the piano with astonishing skill - the consummate leading-man and a perfect Peter Allen. Accompanying himself on the grand piano, he opened the show with a heartfelt “The Lives of Me”.

Lara Boyle’s Garland channelled the actress’s famed neurosis. Hannah Kassulke was a young but determined Minnelli, with Sally Daly, as Allen’s mother Marion nicely capturing Aussie small-town warmth. As Young Peter, Joshua Messmore tap danced like pro, whilst Nathan Hollingworth’s Greg was flouncy. It was the first time I’ve ever seen this role played as overtly gay, and in my opinion a directorial misstep. There should be some contrast between the flamboyant Allen and his lover.

The directors, John Boyce and Ruby Foster, decided to use vintage video on small screens placed either side of the proscenium arch to help set time and place. In the early stages of the show is worked perfectly, showing Allen’s home-town Armidale as it was in the 1950s, and also showing TV ads of the period, but later Toft and Boyle playing Allen and Garland had to fight for attention with images of the real stars playing simultaneously. It killed the theatrical illusion the actors were trying to create on stage.

Despite some flat brass work, musically the show was in its best place with songs that were only accompanied by piano and fortunately there were many.

A big plus were the chorus girls who were attractive and shapely and could high-kick as well as the actual Radio City Rockettes.

Peter Pinne