Little Women the Broadway Musical

Little Women the Broadway Musical
Book by Allan Key. Music by Jason Howland. Lyrics by Mindi Dickstein. Based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott. Directed by Pip Mushin. Presented by Griffith University Queensland Conservatorium. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, 13-20 July, 2018

It’s always a delight to view a performance packed with talent and enthusiasm. That’s precisely what the third year students from Griffith University’s Queensland Conservatorium delivered in Little Women the Broadway Musical.

On the evening Stage Whispers attended, we saw the ‘Hag Cast’ performing the emotional rollercoaster of a script. A total of three different variations on casting appeared throughout the season. Nicole Herreen as Jo was wonderfully charismatic and brought just the right amount of spunk to the role. Every time she stepped on stage, it was hard to watch anyone else. That’s no reflection on the other performers but rather a compliment to Ms Herreen’s ability to shine and captivate.

The rest of the cast were very good in their roles too. Emma Kavanagh played a perfect Beth and Paige Byrne was a beautifully loving Marmee. Paige and Nicole in particular should be commended for their magnificent singing. The male members of the cast were a little weaker in their acting, singing and dancing skills than the women. None the less, they were still entertaining to watch and didn’t drag the show down in any way. Everyone picked up their cues well and executed their blocking effectively.

The music, as you might expect from Conservatorium students, was spectacular. The live band under the baton of musical director and conductor Dominic Woodhead was so perfectly on point you could have been fooled into thinking you were hearing a fully produced, pre-recorded soundtrack.

Choreography from Joseph Simons was lively and period appropriate. It felt very natural to the scenes and lacked that overly contrived style you see in a lot of musical theatre. Sharon Clarke’s costumes were also right for the era in which the story is set. The company did very well to handle a small unforseen costuming issue, when Jo’s petticoat didn’t make the journey with her as she stood up from a chaise to walk across a room. That showed a very high level of training and professionalism. Even when the audience giggled, nobody corpsed or allowed the mishap to pull additional focus.

The set design by Rachel Edwards was one of the most impressive aspects of the production. That’s saying a lot as the direction, music and acting was very good. Rachel created multi purpose spaces and designed simple rearrangements of furnishings to create the variety of scenes needed. The attic design in particular was wonderful. We really loved the pages from books and musical scores that were plastered over the stairs to the attic and the frame of the scrim. The scrim itself was well used too for flashbacks and excerpts from Jo’s stories.

Little Women the Broadway Musical, while based on a novel written in 1869, still holds relevance for a modern audience. Jo’s bravery in the face of the social norms that served to ‘keep women in their place’ serve as a great reminder of how much closer we are as a society to equality for all, yet how far we still have to travel. The cast and crew of this production ought to be very proud of the high standard of show they delivered and their abilities to convey the important political subtext of the narrative.

Kiesten McCauley 

 

Photographer:Nick Morrissey.

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