Theatre: Next to Normal (★★★)

Brendan Hansen and Rachael Beck

by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Directed by Adam Mitchell
Musical Director David Young

Designed by Bruce McKinven
With Shannen Alyce, Rachael Beck, James Bell, Michael Cormick, Brendan Hanson and Joel Horwood
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until Nov 22

I’m sure we’ve all been waiting for a rock musical about bipolar depressive disorder with delusional episodes, and now we have it – Next to Normal (at the Heath Ledger Theatre, directed by Adam Mitchell).
Certainly the Americans, who are miles ahead of the game in such matters, were. When the Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey-penned show hit Broadway in 2009 it was showered with awards (including a rare Pulitzer Prize for a musical) and rewarded with record-breaking box office takings. It’s since travelled the world; this is its fifth Australian staging.
It’s a strange beast. One thing that it’s not, despite the tag and the publicity, is a rock musical; if these songs, most of which sound like scrunched up and binned attempts to write another Defying Gravity, are rock, then Angus Young wrote Jesus Christ Superstar.
I’m not even sure that it’s a musical in the accepted sense. Oh, there’s music, lots of it; there are 42 songs in the show’s 130-odd minutes, surely a record, but that leaves precious little time for anything else. The music serves no purpose other than to carry the text. Dance is discarded entirely, spoken dialogue all but. So is humour (there was originally some, I read, but it was excised in the pursuit of cohesion and a “responsible” approach to its depiction of its hard, dangerous subject).
It as if we are at two shows at once: one, a dark drama on the devastation caused by mental illness, I’ll gladly see again; the other, the one with all the watery music, I’ll happily pass on.     

Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Annie

 By Martin Charnin, Charles Strouse and Thomas Meehan

Directed by Karen Johnson Mortimer

Musical director Peter Casey

Set Design by Kenneth Foy

Choreography by Kelly Aykers

Starring Nancye Hayes, Michael Cormick, Todd McKenney, Bert Newton, Chloe Dallimore, Julie Lea Goodwin and Claudia Fitzgerald as Annie

Burswood Theatre

Until August 23

Claudia Fitzgerald

Much depends on whether you’re going to Annie expecting a musical or an entertainment. As the former, it leaves a fair bit to be desired; as the latter, it’s got a lot to recommend it.

In truth, it’s a pretty slight work, missing most of the original Harold Gray cartoon strip’s Dickensian darkness and political sting. It’s not one of Broadway’s great scores either; the two big numbers, Tomorrow and Hard-Knock Life, would start on the bench at best in any of the great musicals, and there’s little else here that isn’t done much better elsewhere.

But Annie’s failings as a musical are hardly the fault of the big, diverse cast of this production, or the work of its creative team.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian