I’m not exactly the target audience for Beaconsfield: The Musical. As a newcomer to Australia, I was only made aware of the disaster in a very bare-bones manner in the hours immediately prior to seeing the musical itself. I wouldn’t know an Australian television personality or newsreader if you stapled one to my head, and since this show revolves around portraying the reactions of various Australian media outlets to the tragedy, it leans very heavily on the audience being able to pick up on pop culture shorthand, which meant that the majority of the jokes went right over my head while the rest of the crowd was laughing itself silly. But it’s ultimately a satire of the way the news media all over the world tends to sensationalize events, so even though I didn’t know who anyone was, I still had a really great time watching this show. Whether it was the enthusiasm of the performers, the brilliantly orchestrated quick changes or just the joy within the songs themselves, the whole evening was bursting with so much energy I felt it could have easily doubled its run-time without running short of material.
The performers really make the piece. You could not imagine a better voice for the narrator than Robbie McGregor, who is clearly having a blast working alongside Amanda Buckley, Kate McLennan, Toby Truslove and writer Dan Ilic. All acquit themselves admirably, but it’s Buckley’s powerful voice that dominates the best of the songs. She has a voice that could fill a hall, which is where a show as good as this one belongs. The actors try to make a merit out of being in the tiny room at Arthur’s bar, jumping up and down from the front row and often running behind the audience to say their lines, but the tiny stage does make the show feel constrained sometimes, and the acoustics of the room often mean that you cannot hear the performers singing over the much larger sound of the piano. There’s also a projector that is very under-utilized. At the beginning of the show it’s used to quickly and cleverly establish the scene on a variety of set-pieces. Given the massive number of quick scene changes involving the same four actors playing different characters, it was often difficult to figure out exactly what was going on, and the projector could have alleviated this problem by indicating where the scene was supposed to be taking place, but its use is abandoned after the first half of the show.
But these are all minor quibbles. The show is a fun, irreverent, enjoyable hour. Recommended.
For more info and booking details go to Beaconsfield: The Musical