WAPAA’s 2nd and 3rd Year Music Theatre Production of Carousel. Photo by Jon Green.
WAAPA strikes again! If you love musicals, do yourself a favour and head to The Regal this week to catch Carousel. You are guaranteed to leave smiling and whistling or humming your favourite tune from one of the many illustrious classics featured here – while being assured that the future of musical theatre is in good hands with these youngsters.
The epic instrumental opener/prologue is a feast for the senses and sets the scene with colour, movement and dynamic intensity. For Director Jason Langley, and Choreographer Cameron Mitchell, this is not their first rodeo with WAAPA productions, and their experience enables them to place the entire cast of second year and graduating Musical Theatre students on stage at the same time with ease, testament also to Tyler Hill’s simple and effective set design.
‘Mr Snow’ is the first musical number and showcases the combined women’s harmonies to perfection. ‘June is Bustin Out All Over’ is our first musical introduction to the full cast, and it’s a clever, cheeky, sexy corker. The student cast gave no indication that they were anything less than seasoned performers, as rarely was a note or foot out of place throughout the entire show.
Jessica Clancy is perfectly cast as the deliciously innocent and good-natured millworker Carrie Pipperidge, almost stealing the show with facial expressions alone, as Carrie is one of the few completely likeable characters within the Carousel storyline. Kurt Russo as Mr Snow makes an adorable entrance, catching his gushing bride to be unawares, and he perfectly embodies the bumbling ambitious fishermen and all his complexities. Russo and Clancys performance of ’When the Children are Asleep’ was completely endearing, generating knowing laughter from me and a few ladies I could see around me – a powerful sign of the strength of the performances.
Amy Fortnum and Andrew Coshan as the show leads Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow were pure wonders to behold. Both characters are hard for (especially modern) audiences to connect with, as the dysfunction between ever faithful and forgiving Julie and violent Billy is hard to digest yet unfortunately somewhat timeless. My prediction is that Andrew Coshan will get heavily compared to previous WAAPA graduate Hugh Jackman in the future, and rightly so, as both are tall, handsome, and massively talented.
Stacey Thomsett played the tough Mrs Mullin well, and Todd Peydo brought the evil jailbird Jigger Craigin to life all too easily, and I look forward to seeing both performers in the future, as they definitely have the chops for it.
The extra genius of these large scale mid-year WAAPA productions is the utilising of graduating music students and creating a live orchestra. This is a powerful score, and under the direction of WAAPA stalwart David King, was played to perfection and helped lift the show even further.
A huge congratulations also has to go to the student technicians who make these large scale complex shows work seamlessly too. The lighting and sound was clean and perfectly matched the professionalism of the performers.
I must admit though, that in the age of #MeToo, I am not sure why a musical that contains lines such as ‘Has it ever happened to you? Has anyone ever hit you without hurtin’?’ ‘It is possible, dear, fer someone to hit you — hit you hard — and not hurt at all,’ has been reprised, as it is about a man who only figures out how to be human after he dies, and as an audience we are supposed to look past Bigelow and his problematic views and crimes, but it is indeed a moving piece of theatre that I hope will help launch the careers of many.
Carousel
Music by: Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by: Oscar Hammerstein II
Director: Jason Langley
Music Director: David King
Choreographer: Cameron Mitchell
Lighting Designer: Trudy Dalgleish
Set Designer: Tyler Hill
Costume Designer: Eiilish Campbell
Performed by: 2nd and 3rd Year Music Theatre students and WAAPA Music students
Venue: Regal Theatre, Subiaco
16-23 June 2018
