Reviews

The venue, 64 Pentland Avenue, is a modest weatherboard cottage in suburban Yarraville.  Its porchlight beams through the shadows.  We – the audience, eight or nine of us - stand outside in the cold evening street.

Canterbury Theatre Guild’s production of 9 to 5 The Musical, based on the movie of the same name, was a delightful afternoon at the theatre.

The production was brought to life by a talented cast of 22, which nicely filled the compact space at NIDA. The highly entertaining script and score by Dolly Parton and Patricia Resnick is hilarious and really gives the audience an inside view of office life in the 1980’s for three women, working for a rude and very sexist boss at the fictional setting of “Consolidated Industries”.

As the title suggests, this play gives the audience a chance to hear, and see, what goes on offstage during a performance. Full of innuendo and fast-paced physical comedy, this is a show for those with a penchant for old-school British comedy. What begins as a series of close calls, deteriorates into outright disaster. It is every theatre person’s worst nightmares jam packed into one show.

This interplay between various levels of society in a sea of gossip and scandal which causes both outrage and indignation makes for an interesting interpretation of this play, first produced in 1892.  Wilde set the play initially in London but director Greg Scurr has it in Brisbane in the summer of 1954. This meant the audience could relate to their own town, understand the accents and know the music played for background and atmosphere. For the most part, it worked well.