Reviews

The Jersey Boys musical has made a return to Sydney a decade after it first opened here and the show still packs a punch.

The story of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons - four American teenagers with police records who moulded themselves into one of the best selling music acts of all time - is a riveting ‘rags to riches’ yarn.

WHILE using the songs of British rock band Queen to help tell a story about life in a future world might seem to be unworkable, this a very enjoyable musical, with writer Ben Elton helping to make it gripping, funny and swinging. And the staging by director Julie Black and her team added to the pleasure, with the costumes, sets, lighting and occasional projections giving the Earth (here known as iPlanet) a very different look to what we see around us, and the small band and large singing ensemble in the orchestra pit boosting the sound.

Hello, Dolly! has had a renaissance ever since Bette Midler’s 2017 smash Broadway revival. Jerry Herman’s hugely hummable score, coupled with Michael Stewart’s smart and funny book, make it the perfect musical comedy.

Toowoomba Chorale’s production of it may not be perfect, but it does have its joys, not the least being director/choreographer Bec Stanley’s terrific routines.

The American playwright Stephen Karam grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That’s also where the characters of this play - the Blake family - are from. They’ve assembled in a dark, rundown apartment in New York’s Chinatown, where the youngest daughter Brigid has just moved in with her boyfriend. It’s Thanksgiving and the early tensions signal this won’t go well.