Reviews

“Hello, Dolly! Well, Hello Dolly! It's so nice to have you back where you belong” – on stage, at Sutherland Entertainment Centre.

Classic 1960s musical Hello, Dolly! has an infectious score and a witty, engaging script which stands up well. Even the odd moment of political incorrectness feels like it was written tongue-in-cheek, and it’s certainly delivered that way. It’s a show brimming with humanity and heart.

Days later I can still hear the birds, squawking at each other as they debate humanity’s ineptitude: “Stupid…human….stupid….human….AARRRG.”

You’re more than an observer in the audience of The Bluebird Mechanicals, you’re committed to taking a ride that is at times awkward, uncomfortable, vulgar, intense, humorous and mesmerising.

You do not leave the theatre unmoved, just as you can’t leave a relationship unchanged, but what you do feel can take a while to process.

Meryl Streep is a hard act to follow but Diana McLean makes you forget her in an instant the moment she walks on stage in this touring production of Glorious!, Peter Quilter’s play about the legendary off-key singing soprano Florence Foster Jenkins. Bringing zeal, passion and considerable warmth to the character, she establishes instant rapport with the audience (as Foster Jenkins obviously did back in the forties) massacring some of the most difficult arias in the opera canon. Who knew McLean could sing and sing so well badly?

Director Michele McNamara’s intention for Sarah Kane’s 1999 play (first performed in 2000) is to depict ‘a world where we can see what we feel’.  In this, she largely succeeds.  It’s a play ‘about’ the experience of clinical depression and the aim, for this director, is to take us into the world of mental illness.