Reviews

Image: Sheridan Harbridge

In the year 2000, the ABC sent two young reporters to Indonesia to cut their teeth as the second in charge reporter in the Jakarta Bureau.

One was Sally Sara – who went on to become a celebrated foreign correspondent and now an accomplished playwright. The other was myself.

Ever since entrepreneur Jim Cavill built his Surfers Paradise Hotel in the 1920s, the corner of Cavill and Orchid Avenues has been the beating heart of live entertainment on Queensland’s Gold Coast. And after a lonely year in lockdown, live music is back on the road, and performing at that famous corner – now the Hard Rock Café. This venue celebrated its 25th anniversary on 22 March.

Image:  Chloé Zuel as Elizabeth and Jason Arrow as Alexander Hamilton in the Australian Production. Photographer: Daniel Boud.

This musical follows the path of young students as they strive to have a school dance, something we take for granted. It begins with a teenager, Ren McCormack, who loves to dance to relax and what happens when he and his mother have to move from Chicago to an ultra-conservative town named Bomont. After a tragic death of four teenagers some four years before, the town had banned dancing, along with many other joys of the young, under the direction of Reverend Shaw Moore, an ultra conservative.