The Wedding Singer

It hasn’t happened for a long time, but Sydney has four large professional musicals going at once, and The Wedding Singer, which has a short season at the State Theatre before returning to Melbourne and then Perth, is the best date night out of those on stage now.

The romantic comedy from 1998 starred Adam Sandler as the wedding singer who fell in love with a waitress played by Drew Barrymore.

Whilst the movie was filled with classic hits from the 1980s, the musical, which ran for nine months on Broadway, has an original score.

There are lots of funny one-liners which hark back to the era of Rubik’s Cubes, shoulder pads and big hair, but the music is never quite as good as those classic hit songs.

We see an impersonator of Boy George, Van Halen, Michael Jackson and Billy Idol but it is a little frustrating not to hear their music.

Probably the best song of the night was the only one used from the movie that was composed by Sandler – “Grow Old With You”.

Still there is a lot to like in this production, which the cast threw themselves into with gusto after two false starts caused by the dreaded virus.

For starters it is a fabulous night of dancing. It began with a frenzy of ‘80s schtick in the opening number “It’s my Wedding Day”, rose to new heights in a stunning rendition of the song about New York greed called “All About the Green” and Kirby Burgess was smoking hot in a dance number on a double bed.

The leading man Christian Charisiou was dynamic and avoided the pitfalls of trying to impersonate Sandler.  Likewise, Teagan Wouters as Julia put her own stamp on the role.

However, the secondary couple in the plot, played by Haydan Hawkin and Nadia Komazec displayed a little more passion and chemistry on stage. This was explained by the fact that the actors became a real-life couple during the first run of the show and are engaged to be married.

Being a short run of the musical, there a few bells and whistles missing from the production – such as the absence of a Bar Mitzvah boy in the song about a Bar Mitzvah. But lots of great detail in costumes and cute cameo roles in the ensemble largely covered the gaps.

Ironically, younger members of the audience – born way after the 1980s – seemed to be enjoying the production the most even if they didn’t get all the references.

In a few scenes the Wall Street trader played by Stephen Mahy carries around a mobile phone as big as a brick. I had to explain to my teenage daughter afterwards that being an older fossil I used a phone like that once.

David Spicer