Reviews

It's not often a reviewer can write about the choreography of a tongue, a set of vocal chords, hands and even flippers, but along with ten tapping feet, thumping bass, guitar and percussion, Brisbane-based Raw Dance Company performed with all of the above and more in this rhythmic extravaganza of dazzling sight and sound.

Children of Eden is all about the beginning, but it played last in the triptych of Stephen Schwartz’s musicals, preceded by Godspell and Pippin, all presented by Magnormos this September.

The narrative focuses on the two Biblical creation stories in the book of Genesis: Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, their banishment into the wilderness, and their sons Cain and Abel in the first half, and then the story of Noah and the flood after interval.

It is a thrill to see a musical which is so fiendishly difficult to stage – produced with such panache by a community theatre for the first time in Sydney.

The Miranda Musical Society had the additional challenge of staging the work in a venue without a fly tower – which limited the famous chandeliers to a hoist -  and inadequate space for the orchestra.

Instead the audience could see the off stage musicians corralled next to the entrance to the dress circle, with the music piped back into the venue.  

This musical, based on Harold Gray’s 1930s comic strip featuring the feisty, ever-optimistic eleven-year-old red-haired orphan, Annie, gives us an insight into life and politics in New York during the Great Depression.