Reviews

Tea Tree Players have been tailoring live community theatre to their loyal audiences since 1976 and My Friend Miss Flint, the first of this year’s offerings, is no exception.

Premiering in 1984, My Friend Miss Flint is an often performed, typical British comedy. However, times have changed and references to “fat, unattractive women” are unnecessary and could be cut without affecting the play’s integrity.

It is not hard to imagine how the visual splendour of the original 1994 film could be transposed to the stage. This tenth-anniversary return run lives up to every expectation and is just as flamboyant and impish as the film. This musical version is an absolute extravaganza of glittering costumes, awesome sets and fabulous musical talent.

Self-proclaiming “three-time Helpmann Award-winner” Mitchell Butel is here the vessel through which God steps down to revise with us his now musty Ten Commandments. 

It’s a God, of course, more queenly than godly, an acidic, point scoring showman who, while correcting many of our biblical misunderstandings, ends a little conflicted about his values.

Can a musical be simultaneously indefensible and irresistible? Why, yes it can. Witness Xanadu, the outlandishly enjoyable stage spoof of the outrageously bad movie from 1980 about a painter and his muse who find love at a roller disco in Los Angeles. The plot, for those unfamiliar with the film, concerns Clio, the Muse of History and leader of the muses who comes down to earth in 1980, abetted by her six raucous sister Muses, to inspire an artistic achievement, a roller disco. An artist has drawn a mural of the Muses that conveniently serves as their gateway to earth.