Reviews

This popular musical is Ballina’s final offering for the year. It’s full of colour, great performances and proving to be a great favourite with all.

Sue Belsham has managed to capture the magic, and with Leanne Broadley’s musical direction and Jaime Sheehan’s choreography, has delivered a bright and memorable show.

Leading the cast are two Gold Coast Area Palm awarded performers, Veronica Lovejoy in the title role, ably complemented by Brian Pamphilon as Bert.

This is an ideal time of the year for this play, as we are being inundated with thousands of calendars from which to choose.

As the curtain rises we find Bibsby (James Cerche), former thespian, in a run-down cemetery tending to the graves, and caring for two beings.  Garm (Cait Spiker) and Derb (Ben Walter) are siblings, literally stuck half way between this world and the grave, and demand attention from the depressed Bibsby, who would rather they just go back to sleep. They argue and rant, and rant and argue. The unsettling presence of a ghostly mother figure (Alex Aldrich) circles the stage and eventually joins the action with a grounding solemnity and an impressive show of puppetry.

In the imaginary town of Coriole, a committee of six has the task of organising the annual Australia Day Celebrations. They are character types one might find among the members of any organisation, country or city - an aspiring politician, a green feminist, a redneck denialist, a token ‘new’ Australian. To put them together on the Australia Day Committee of a small country town provides the basis of comic satire, for which playwright Jonathan Biggins is well known.