Broadway On Screen

On the morning of this concert when told his leading lady, Lucy Durack, was suffering from a throat infection and couldn’t sing, the ever-resourceful conductor Patrick Pickett found a replacement. And what a replacement she was, Brisbane born Aria winner and international star of Andre Rieu’s concerts since 2007, Mirusia.

The theme of the concert was to celebrate Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 70^th birthday, and Mirusia’s contribution’s were a glorious “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from The Phantom of the Opera, and a simply stunning version of “Memory” from Cats, in which she sang the bridge one-octave higher than it is written. She also sang her own self-penned “This Time Tomorrow”, a lovely ballad in Webber’s style, as well as the tender “Already Home” from Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium production of The Wizard of Oz, accompanied by the Queensland Conservatorium Performing Arts Ensemble.

Pickett showcased three of the student tenors, Lachlan Griffith, Daniel Hamilton and Jackson Head, on three very different musical theatre favourites, with Hamilton particularly impressive singing a buoyant and sunny “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, and gave the girls, Paige Byrne, Paige McKay and Hannah Bennett, their own spotlight with a newly arranged and well-sung Lloyd Webber “Love Trio” (“Love Changes Everything”/ ”Unexpected Song”/”I Don’t Know How To Love Him”).

The orchestra were at the top of their game with a medley from Aladdin, the overture to Gypsy, and a new and very well orchestrated Bruce Healey arrangement of songs by Irving Berlin.

With a few strands of straw, the young and personable Rune Nydal captured the quirk and charm of The Wizard of Oz’s scarecrow with the lyrically witty “If I Only Had a Brain”, while Mirusia dueted with Griffith student Emma Kavanagh on Wicked’s much-loved friendship ballad “For Good”.

The concert opened with all ninety of the Performing Arts Ensemble on-stage and down the sides of the auditorium singing a high-energy medley from Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell, and they closed it with an even more energetic performance of the megamix finale from Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But best of all was the first-act finale with Mirusia and the complete ensemble giving a highly-emotional performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s anthemic “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel.

It was the Qld Pops best concert this year and undoubtedly the best outing by the Conservatorium Performing Arts Ensemble yet.

Peter Pinne