Be More Chill

Be More Chill is the musical which made it to Broadway thanks to fan power. An underground viral obsession with the cast album rescued the production which ran for six weeks in New Jersey, chalking up more than a hundred million downloads.

As I looked around the Zenith Theatre, I laid eyes on one of those obsessives, a young member of the audience who was mouthing word for word the lyrics to one of the songs “Michael in the Bathroom”.

It wasn’t a well-known hymn from The Sound of Music he was reciting, rather a scene depicting Michael (Josh Maher) locking himself in a bathroom, whilst a dozen ready to burst stressed teenagers at a party bang on the door to let them in.

The premise of Be More Chill is that a teenager lacking in confidence is tempted to ingest a supercomputer powered by quantum nanotechnology to make himself cooler.

It is quite a demanding production with many different settings, twists and turns that North Shore produced with 150 costumes and props.

A clever but simple set under the direction of Sarah Campbell, where only limited set piece changes were made, lively and entertaining choreography from Kristy Hooper and a thumping band conducted by David Lang kept the pace moving.

This musical set, in a high school, traversing sex, pills and rock n roll, is a long way from the North Shore Theatre Company of old. The formerly named Chatswood Musical Society (founded in the 1950s) was best known in previous decades for staging dusty operettas with large casts of mature performers. This production by contrast was bursting at the seams with youth and energy.

The lead role of Jeremy Heere is rarely off the stage, and Ellis Pinkerton, another Be More Chill uber fan, anchored the production with style and teenage angst.

Leah Griffith played the role of Jeremy’s inner computer coach The Squip with military precision.

There is a good spread of parts to share around the talented ensemble. They include Mr Heere (Michael Mulvenna) as the father who walks around the house in his underpants, and a bevy of girl prospects for the leading man who all had moments to shine - Christina (Rhiannon Lidbury), Brooke (Megan Robinson) and Chloe (Gabrielle Rawlings) who had the challenge of looking raunchy in a nappy.

For obsessives of Be More Chill and newbies like me it was an engaging and entertaining trip to the theatre.

David Spicer