Carrie The Musical

At worst (or do I mean best) I could expect to walk away from the Seymour Centre with the highly collectable experience of finally seeing one of Broadway’s most notorious musical flops, Carrie – tantalizing for a musical theatre tragic.

Had Squabbalogic gone mad. Sydney’s most adventurous Indee Music Theatre company had taken on the Australian Premiere of the 1988 Broadway bomb based on the Stephen King novel / Brian de Palma movie, which gave its name to Ken Mandelbaum’s definitive book on flop musicals.

Carrie, a huge (for then) $8 million production, met with a mix of standing ovations, cheers and boos during its blink-and-you-missed-it original Broadway run of 15 previews and 5 performances.

No boos, though, when a packed opening night house in the intimate Reginald Theatre greeted the bows with a rapturous ovation.

Gone are the legendary excesses of the overblown original Broadway Schlockbuster, excised for this down-sized 2012 Off-Broadway rework (it played two months of performances and previews, and is no doubt set for a healthy future on US Regional and amateur circuits).

What emerges is an intimate, smaller cast show, told in flash-back, framed by the narration from sole prom-night survivor, Sue.

There’s hints of just about every high school themed musical, but way grittier and nastier; an antidote to their relentless cheery optimisim, and featuring a book with more truth and heart.

You could read it as a topical musical fable or parable too, with contemporary, insidious themes of bullying and child abuse, if you don’t think that’s reading a bit too much into a musical.

Then there’s the mother / daughter relationship at the show’s heart.

A newcomer to Sydney, Hilary Cole is simply spellbinding in the title role of Carrie White; a Ballarat Arts Academy graduate, she has a terrific voice, and utterly inhabits an achingly believable portrayal of the role.

Subtly monstrous, Margi de Ferranti is an unintentionally abusive nightmare of a mother as Margaret White, cloaking physical and emotional abuse of her daughter, and her own sexual repression, under cover of religion and what she believes to be maternal devotion.

Margi’s great musical theatre voice blends splendidly, musically and dramatically, in duets with Hilary, while she scores with probably the night’s biggest ballad. The central dramatic tension between the two simmers then sizzles.

Most High School genre musicals have their bad girl or boy – but they’ve got nothing on the unflinchingly nasty ringleader and bully Chris, played with vindictive zest by VCA grad Prudence Holloway. She sets the tone for the small, exuberant ensemble who conspire with her to make Carrie’s life a misery throughout the show, while to all other intents and purposes looking like they’ve stepped straight out of Grease.

As nice girl Sue, who also provides the narrative frame, and her athlete / sensitive poet boyfriend Tommy, Adèle Parkinson and Rob Johnson go beyond potential genre stereotypes to find the necessary sincerity, truth and belief essential to making their relationship, and their vital part in Carrie’s story, truly matter. Likewise, the sheer humanity of Bridget Keating’s portrayal of Phys. Ed. teacher Miss Gardner, balancing empathy and reality in championing of the struggling Carrie, further enhances the dramatic credibility. As interpreted, you feel Carrie is in the hands of the genuine item, a teacher you’d entrust kids to, unlike anything that could step out of Grease.

Carrie The Musical has been redeemed, from archetypal flop to an enjoyable though sometimes flawed musical.

All the more pertinent with current focus on bullying and child abuse,when played for the truth of its adolescent trauma and mother / daughter narratives, in a tightly focused production like this one, enhanced further as Jay James Moody’s direction surely and effectively builds and builds on the tension and unerringly strives for emotional truth, audiences will connect to the real human story of Carrie, as much as they will delight in the iconic blood-soaked prom dress.

It’s a fluid production, facilitated by Sean Minahan’s design, a functional, atmospheric single set anticipating the show’s chilling climax, mostly using no more than simple props to suggest changes.

But yes, be it fable / parable, or credible on adolescent issues, Carrie is indeed based on a classic horror film, and packs a climax more like an Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy than any musical I know, with a stage filled with as many bodies as a Les Miz barricade; a bit like Hamlet by telekinesis.

See this one – you won’t regret it.

Neil Litchfield

Photographer: Michael Francis