‘Songs in the Sea, Major?’ marked the debut festival show for a new musically comedy trio ‘The Polar Bearings”. Stuart Bowden and “Margaret Paul”comic (Tim Ross had walked the plank!) presented an all singing, all dancing comedic spectacular set on the high seas.
Inspired by the media frenzy regarding Jessica Watson’s solo sea voyage, the story began as Maggie’s attempt to be the youngest person on crutches to sail solo around the world. As the story took off in some silly and unexpected directions, jokes about various other recent current events were included to good effect as well as a number of pop culture references that went down well, especially by those more familiar with the items in question.
Most impressive was the fact that Margaret was actually relying on the crutches and had worked her ailment into the premise of the show. This sank in as she adopted an additional character still wielding the supports. While this impacted a little on the fluidity of the action sequences and manual set changes, she pulled it off and gave the show a charmingly clunky feel. What makes this beyond the call of duty is that they are performing in a venue located up several flights of stairs!
The nautical theme gave the pair plenty of opportunities to insert lots of puns and chances to play around with the ignorances of landlubbers. Some obligatory toilet humour was presented in clever visual and musical ways. A couple of sequences of running a word into the ground and some musical jokes were a little hit and miss but their general wordplay was impressive. Things even got a little meta towards the end to add to the reality of the crutches.
The bulk of the show was presented in song. Accompanied by either a backing track or Stuart’s ukelele, they were a diverse collection of tunes that effectively propelled the story forward. The dialogue, as amusing as it was, usually existed to provide a link to the next number. The comedic numbers were full of brilliantly amusing ideas that were very silly and mildly disturbing at times. The more serious numbers had some humour injected by way of hammy delivery, wacky physicality and funny running commentary. Both performers could really belt out a tune and they certainly had the comic timing to match.
Creative use of cardboard cutouts for scenery and simple props gave the a nice home made feel while some creative costuming allowed them to introduce extra characters into the story. Lack of lighting control gave them the opportunity to play around with theatrical conventions.
This was a fun show that had everyone smiling, tapping their toes and laughing throughout. Those in the mood for some well executed musical theatre should definitely check it out.
For booking details visit the Comedy Festival website