Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Book and lyrics by Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, music by Jed Whedon. Hunter TAFE Performing Arts. The Playhouse, Newcastle (NSW). July 9 to 18.

As the title suggests, this is a musical of today. But it is also in the best traditions of musicals, reworking an old storyline (think The Phantom of the Opera) and offering a tongue-in-cheek look at staple literary figures (the masked super-hero, the evil scientist whose villainy is punctured by love, the cute girl-next-door).
Dr Horrible was written as a low-cost musical film for internet viewing but it adapts well to the stage. Its brisk 50 minutes includes a three-act format, and songs on staple themes – romantic duets, introspective solos about love and ambition, triumphal statements of self-esteem – that don’t wear out their welcome.
The title character is a lab-coated inventor who proudly proclaims his badness on a video blog. His latest creation is a freeze-ray that will stop people in their tracks. He needs a carefully guarded chemical, wonderflonium, to make the device operative. But while he’s plotting to hijack a wonderflonium consignment he is also spending time at a laundromat, in the guise of bashful alter-ego, Billy, chatting with the girl of his dreams, Penny.
The staging of the hijack was a highlight of a show that was fun from beginning to end. In the online film, the wonderflonium is in a delivery van, which narrowly misses hitting Penny through the intervention of the masked and extremely vain Captain Hammer.
Here, the chemical was in a pram wheeled by a nun (an amusing Hitchcockian touch) and the timing of the heist and Captain Hammer’s intervention on a crowd-filled street were skilfully and amusingly choreographed by director Andrew Holmes.
David Fenwick showed both sides of Dr Horrible well – the determined evil genius and the shy would-be wooer; Christopher Newton was struttingly self-centred as the chest-thrust-forward Captain Hammer; and Sarah Mainey’s specs-wearing Penny was the epitome of sweet innocence.
Ken Longworth

(from L-R) Chris Newton as Captain Hammer, David Fenwick as Dr. Horrible and Sarah Mainey as Penny in Dr Horrible, presented as part of Mr Clegg’s Creative Industry..
 

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