Reviews

Not being particularly familiar with Merrily We Roll Along, other than knowing that in 1981 it closed on Broadway after sixteen performances, I attended with open mind and faith in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of SA.

Matt Smith has assembled a talented cast to handle the tongue-twisting musical challenge that comes with a Sondheim show. It is well directed with plenty of fast scene changes and movement to hold the audience’s attention for the 2 hours 45 minutes.

It's a brave choice to pull together a fully-realised musical, exclusively for a mere two-night stint at any festival – let alone one staged in Launceston, but with Tyran Parke's contacts, resources and passion, this kind of outrageousness has become de rigueur for the Australian Musical Theatre Festival, now in its 6th year.

University student performances of any of the arts' repertoire is often a worthwhile visit, providing the opportunity to view our future talent and even possible stars of the future. With a variety of vocal talent on display in this modern interpretation of an historic opera, indeed one of the first of its kind having been composed in 1640, the pedagogic talent of the university's staff were in full flood tackling a score out of the boundaries of the forthcoming Classical period and the famous composers who eventually brought opera to the forefront.

‘Esteemed members of the academy,’ opens the solo performer in Colin Teevan’s Kafka’s Monkey (adapted from Franz Kafka’s short story A Report to an Academy), ‘You’ve done me the great honour of inviting me to give an account of my former life … as an ape.’ So begins the peculiar story of ‘Red Peter’, an ape captured violently in Africa and brought by sea to England, where he sees ‘no way out’ but to abandon his true nature and adopt the habits of humans – a species he abhors – in ord