Reviews

This opera on the life and murder of America’s first elected openly gay official was staged twenty years ago in Houston and New York and, after revisions, in Harvey Milk’s hometown of San Francisco.  It’s hasn’t been seen since.

Now this staged concert version with a cast backed by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir, a one-off at Sydney Town Hall, follows a season at Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival. 

There may be some theatre snobs who won’t go to see this beautiful production because of a stupid misconception (as someone said to me) that “TV actors are never any good on stage”. It’s utter rubbish in most cases, and most particularly in THIS case. Yes, Director Collette Man and her two stars, Kate Kendall and Damien Richardson, are all regulars in TV “Soap” Neighbours, but all that proves is how incredibly versatile and talented all three are.

Musical of Musicals the Musical might be better described as five musicals in one. Taking the basic story of a young woman who is unable to pay her rent, we see the story as if written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb.

The cast of four - Ruth Bennett, Rachel Monamy, David Wallace and Jesse Watts, beautifully accompanied by director (and occasional narrator) Kate McIntosh, are all superb and work outstandingly well as a team.

Gender bending may seem a modern idea but 90 years ago novelist Virginia Woolf was creating Orlando, a handsomely hosed, favourite page boy of old Elizabeth I, who is later transformed into a woman and projected through the centuries. 

Woolf’s inspiration, back in the 1920’s, was her new lover, the shape-shifting lesbian Vita Sackville-West and her rather aristocratic ancestors.