Reviews

This reviewer has long been of the opinion that you cannot throw a rock anywhere in the NSW Central Coast without hitting a gifted young musician or musical theatre performer, so it was only a matter of time before someone on “Sydney's Far North Shore” (*patent pending) took the risk of forming a professional co-op theatre company to give the flood of youth talent somewhere to...um, flow. Last year, managing partners of The Nate Butler Studio: Nate Butler and Leisi Edmonds teamed with Toddy Keys and Nathan Dale to form Barn Door Productions.

To this veteran ‘Wicked-watcher’, who has seen the production six times over the years, the prospect of an amateur version with mainly youth, was a challenge. How would a traditionally ‘adult’ show work in this format?

As the title suggests, this relatively little-known show celebrates/commiserates that most painful rite of passage – turning 13. At the time of it's Off Off Broadway (Californian) Debut in 2007, 13 was the only musical ever to have a full cast and band made up of teenagers. Making it's Broadway debut over a year later – it closed after a less than a year – but remained a cult hit among die-hard fans and has been revised and 'revived' at various times in scattered capital cities ever since.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula there is a brief mentione of Dracula travelling by ship to England. Writer Sean Carney has chosen to imagine what occurred on that fateful trip and has created an eerie tale that is confidently presented.

We are below deck in a cargo area where the Captain of the good ship Demeter is guarding Dracula, who has been captured, chained and caged. The ship is becalmed and an unrelenting fog descends, causing crew and passengers to become unsettled.