Bankstown Celebrates the Show Tunes of Jerry Herman

Bankstown Theatre Company (NSW) are presenting Jerry’s Girls, a celebratory two-hour musical entertainment of glamour, optimism, love, melody, and women featuring the music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, from March 23 at Bankstown Arts Centre.

More than most Broadway songwriters, Jerry Herman has put the ‘larger-than-life’ women of his shows centre stage. There’s Dolly Levi of Hello, Dolly, Auntie Mame of Mame, Countess Aurelia of Dear World, Mabel Normand of Mack and Mabel and female impersonator ZaZa of La Cage Aux Folles.  

There is never an evening when, somewhere in the world, the music and lyrics of Jerry Herman are not being sung by a lady in a red headdress, or a lady with a bugle, or a middle-aged man in a wig and a boa.

So it’s fitting that in Jerry’s Girls there are women centre stage once again; women affectionately celebrating Jerry’s special gift for writing songs that capture the true spirit of the musical theatre.

Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage feature some of the most popular, most-often performed and most successful musical heroines of all time, and have given Jerry Herman the distinction of being the only composer-lyricist in history to have had three musicals that ran more than 1,500 consecutive performances on Broadway.

Jerry Herman has received multiple Tonys, Grammys, Drama Desk Awards, the Johnny Mercer Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, the Oscar Hammerstein Award, the Frederick Lowe Award, and been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Off-Broadway hit Jerry’s Girls features a mixture of show-stoppers, ballads and comedy songs. Bankstown’s production is directed and choreographed by Edward Rooke, with musical direction by Greg Crease.

At Bankstown Arts Centre, Olympic Parade, Bankstown. March 23 at 8pm, March 24 at 1pm and 5pm, March 25 at 1pm, March 30 at 8pm, March 31 at 1pm and 5pm, and April 1 at 1pm. Bookings: (02) 9676 1191.

Images: Diane Wilson, Dale Selsby and Melissa Goman, and Melissa Goman with ensemble.

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