Georgy Girl – the Seekers Musical

If, like me, you grew up in Australia the 1960s, The Seekers, and their hits including “The Carnival is Over”, “I’ll Never Find Another You”,  “A World of Our Own” and “Georgy Girl” are probably part of the soundtrack of your life.

The apparently squeaky clean young Aussie folk group taking on the pop music world in a music industry better know for sex, drugs and rock’n’roll became national icons with their clean-cut image and distinctive harmonies.

In Georgy Girl – the Seekers Musical those iconic harmonies, impressively recreated, are the highlight, and worth the price of admission alone, with Pippa Grandison in sparkling vocal form as Judith Durham, more than ably supported by Phillip Lowe as Keith Potger, Mike McLeish as Bruce Woodley and Glaston Toft as Athol Guy.

The weakness with Georgy Girl is its the book, with its sketchy character development, which can only meander on after the group splits at the height of their success in 1968. Biographical jukebox musicals can be a bit like that unless someone has died tragically and violently in an air crash, or juicy controversy and scandal surrounds their careers. Judith Durham’s great personal loss of her husband Ron Edgeworth, played by Adam Murphy, who has also acted as our amiable narrator, doesn’t provide that kind of dramatic impetus.

There’s fun though, as the broader fashions, music and pop culture of the swinging sixties are evoked by a small, vibrant ensemble.

Happily, the group’s reunions from the 1990s on provide ample cues for some great hits, smashingly performed, to round out the show in style. In a theatre even more popular as a concert venue, the evening is easily at its best at moments when it shifts into something akin to a high calibre tribute show.

When all four original members of The Seekers joined the cast for an opening night bow, it truly was a moment of magic.

Was yours (like mine) one of those proud Aussie families crowded around the TV watching The Seekers make their mark on the other side of the world in the 1960s? The music of this show will bring those memories flooding happily back, while the enjoyment of the young friend I took along makes it clear that the music of The Seekers has a timeless appeal.

Neil Litchfield

Photographer: Jeff Busby