Jules Orcullo is really clear in the beginning, she speaks slowly, deliberately and carefully, directly to the audience. Nothing is real. This is a work of fiction. She has never met Tim Minchin.
Tim Minchin, who spent his twenties writing songs, playing in bands, acting in plays, composing for theatre, playing piano for cabaret artists, and penning tongue-in-cheek beat poems.
His impact on Jules is both manifest in the song writing book and lyrics of this brand new and very now musical, as much as it is her ‘character’s’ vision to make her break into the possibility of not only forgetting Tim Minchin but having a Tim Minchin break in the business. We are all swept away in the fantasy. This funny and laugh out loud treatment of Jules’ enclosed world gallops with energy and teasing wit.
Jules also reveals the role of the memory whereby from the outset Jules tells us this is all magical realism and completely made up and she has NEVER met Tim Minchin and then with a ‘hunchy’ slight wink there is some basis of truth, it is her story.
Intimately set in her childhood bedroom, where out from the lockdowns she has ended up running home, agoraphobic because of and from the recent times, running home to be supported or to be the one to support. As our family ages and as we age, our responsibilities change. Joining her mum, played sensitively by Nova Raboy, in this her performing debut.
The songs and the singing are beautiful, Jules Orcullo is magical each time she propels the story through music. Andy Freeborn has had a delicate touch on the Musical Direction. More often than not accompanied by pre-recorded music she is bound also to her bedroom come office come workshop studio. Holding it all together she scrolls her phone whilst lolling on her bed and each of us easily identify.
Then, in the early reveal ,she accidentally records her Tim Minchin song and it’s uploaded to the outside world through the same social media that has been her distraction. Her idol, Tim Minchin. Could he be the answer to all her woes?
The set is realised with so much detail the scale of Downstairs Belvoir perfectly matching this authentic and intimate meta theatrical fiction. Hailley Hunt wields a time portal to a space that delves as crowded and crushing, and so supportive of the directorial decisions of Amy Sole to air the ‘dirty’ laundry of the story and wash clean Jules once outside existence, with her mum slowly hanging up that washing that both reveals, and disguises, the truth telling.
The level of tension is set whereby we want to know more of the distinctions between Jules’ truth telling and life’s mockery. Amy Sole has cleverly clarified the reality into the magic and out the other side with the close confines of Jules’ room slowly transforming. The repeated role play of mother and daughter, becomes a motif and symbol of their being together and stuck in their world, on repeat.
Kate Baldwin has with the lighting design and a beautiful subtlety created as much fiction and realism across the space and the changing times of day and night and magic narrative that can only work in a Musical.
It is a fantastic story idea, and yet the stakes are in both the writing and the telling and the songs; we care enough and more than enough when a redirection stops all in their tracks.
Who do we really want to be – who do we really think we are? And for whom must we represent ourselves? Are any of us really whole or in truth can we too be found crying in our bedrooms and never coming out.
FORGETTING TIM MINCHIN is beautiful, powerful, gorgeously funny, and packs an emotional punch. Excellent theatre.
A The Joy Offensive production, FORGETTING TIM MINCHIN is playing downstairs at Belvoir Street until the 29th July 2023.
Production photography by Clare Hawley
http://www.thejoyoffensive.com
Review by Elizabeth Surbey