Flaws and All – The Musical

Flaws and All – the Musical is a dichotomy – a new Australian musical played with American accents, yet there’s nothing intrinsically American about the concept – the unrealistic dating expectations of modern women. Conceived and written by 30-something marketing professional Angela Monteagle (who also wrote the lyrics), this vanity production comes direct from a season at the Adelaide Festival Fringe. All creatives are Brisbane based including the cast who have been culled from performers who usually work for Savoyards and Prima.

Written as a fairytale on modern dating, there’s a Prince (Jesse Ainsworth) who’s looking for a girl to love, his father (Nathan Currie) who keeps delivering his son platitudes, a Fairy Godmother (Asabi Goodman) who continually tries to calm the choppy waters to find a happy conclusion, a temptress (Lauren O’Neill) the acerbic and questioning alter ego of every woman, and a bevy of six girls who represent every facet of a woman; clever (Demi Phillips), shy (Gabiella Dennien), insecure (Ebony Hamacek), simple (Elen Tuffley), complicated (Kaitlyn Maxwell) and happy (Samantha Paterson). It’s a fun idea with an off-Broadway sounding score and the cast give committed performances.

Despite a few uncertain notes, Jesse Ainsworth was a handsome pony-tailed Prince, the guy any mother would want for a son-in-law. Asabi Goodman’s rich soul vocal sounds were a plus for the Fairy Godmother, who delivered the show’s audience pleaser “Bulls**t”, a song that built laughter by repeating the title ad-infinitum.

Bitchy put-downs were the order of the day for Lauren O’Neill’s Temptress, which she delivered with razor-sharp precision. Demi Phillips impressed as the clever girl, a corporate ball-buster who had learnt how to parry with the boys, while Elen Tuffley’s simple girl was the one you would want to take home to meet mum.

Composer Lucas D. Lynch’s orchestrations were the best thing about the production. Scored for 6 instruments including harp, and with Lynch on keyboard 1, the sound had texture, was big and totally musically satisfying.

Most of the songs were pretty generic with titles like “Perfect Woman” and “The Ideal Woman” and lyrics that were devoid of any clever lyrical turn of phrase or wit, but “He told his Dad about me” and its reprise “He told his Dog about me” was a cute idea.

Direction by Maureen Bowra was clean-cut and fluid, which was only marred by some scratchy sound and drop-outs at times.

Flaws and All is flawed, but it does hide some good ideas. Maybe the next production will see them bloom.

Peter Pinne