The Willoughby Theatre Company’s production of Nick Enright’s classic THE BOY FROM OZ represented a memorable opening to Chatswood’s long awaited and fantastic new theatre, rather unimiganitively named, the theatre on the Concourse.
Enright’s ‘book’ is made from the finest clay, from which director Tom Sweeney has sculpted a highly impressive production.
Sure he is no Hugh Jackman however Nick Moorehead does a great job stepping into Allen’s shoes. There’s a wonderful lighness and naturalness about his performance. All of Peter Allen’s main character traits came across; his high octane energy, his unpretentiousness, his disarming, off-hand sense of humour (such as his aside, ‘Olivia’s version of I HONESTLY LOVE YOU just bought me another beach house’).
Sweeney’s production features some stunning treatments of songs. In particular two versions blew away, the treatment of I STILL CALL AUSTRALIA HOME where Sweeney brought different generations and backgrounds of Australians out onto the stage in a huge chorus, and QUIET PLEASE, THERE’S A LADY ON STAGE, Allen’s tribute to Judy Garland which always gives me chills when I hear it.
The ensemble cast was great, the production values were easily on par to what one would see in a mainstream production. This show was a ripper.
The strength, the miracle in Enright’s writing, is that it genuinely does feel like we have Peter Allen and his life up there on stage. At the end of the show we hear the radio news broadcast announcing Peter Allen’s death. Moorehead as Allen looks morbid for a brief moment then he says paraphrasing, ‘that’s enough of that. That’s niot what audiences want to hear. They want a show’ and then he swings the show into I GO TO RIO.
Enright shows his man loud and clear- above all Peter Allen was an entertainer. If he had entered THE BOY FROM OZ into the Archibald, it would have had to win!
Tom Sweeney’s revival of THE BOY FROM OZ opened at the Theatre on the Concourse, the corner of Victoria Avenue and Andreson streets Chatswood, on Friday 23rd September and plays until Saturday 1 October, 2011.
(c)David Kary
29th September, 2011