Annie, Bloom, Abel Selaocoe, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Nijinsky

MUSICAL THEATRE
Annie
Capitol Theatre, April 3
Reviewed by CASSIE TONGUE
★★★½

That little redheaded orphan is back again. The comic strip-turned-musical has spawned three films, a live TV staging, and more than one sequel. No matter the decades that roll over the show’s Depression-era cultural references and sweetly offered optimism, Annie might just be an inevitability.

Australia has its own rich Annie history. This revival was last seen here in 2012 and 2001. It begins with a dedication to the 1978 original Australian production, which starred legends such as Nancye Hayes, Jill Perryman and Kevan Johnston (Perryman and Johnston’s granddaughter, Mackenzie Dunn, is playing an appealingly funny Lily St Regis).

And then there’s Anthony Warlow, returning here in the role of Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, which he played to such acclaim in 2000 that a new song, Why Should I Change a Thing, was written for him and added to the show. This production is a victory lap for Warlow, who also played the role here in 2012 and, later that year, on Broadway. The production moves with an ease that’s all Warlow: warm, confident, rich-voiced and a little bit playful. When he’s on stage, the energy settles and resets; he knows how to guide this audience, stacked with families and fans, into a good time.

The story of Annie (Dakota Chanel on opening night; she shares the role with Beatrix Alder, Matilda Casey, and Stephanie McNamara) has become American contemporary myth: the plucky young girl suffering at an orphanage under the so-called care of Miss Hannigan (Debora Krizak, a hoot) gets a lucky break when Grace (Amanda Lea LaVergne, lovely), selects her to stay with billionaire Warbucks over Christmas.

As Warbucks and Annie grow closer, a scam starts brewing – courtesy of St Regis and Miss Hannigan’s brother, Rooster (a charismatic Keanu Gonzalez) – to get some of that Warbucks fortune. It’s no surprise that the good guys win, and Annie’s indefatigable optimism even inspires President Roosevelt (played here by a folksy Greg “Original Yellow Wiggle” Page) to create the New Deal.

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There’s plenty to enjoy: an adorable rotating cast of young orphans (the opening night audience had thundering applause for their rage-cleaning number It’s the Hard Knock Life); dancer and presenter Nakita Clarke’s solo as the Star to Be; and Sandy the dog, who on opening night gave himself a good scratch as Chanel sang the show’s big number, Tomorrow (might be worth the price of admission alone).

As you’d expect of a show from 1978, it’s a bit creaky in 2025. Some lines and lyrics turn on dated stereotypes; its darker themes are played for easy laughs; the so-pleasant songs spark mostly nostalgia. But for families, this is still a safe bet for a good solid few hours of entertainment, and still a great on-ramp for discovering the magic that can happen in a theatre. That’s likely why we keep bringing Annie back: we’re passing her down, offering her promise that better things could arrive tomorrow to our children and loved ones.

MUSICAL THEATRE
Bloom
Roslyn Packer Theatre, April 2
Until May 11
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★

Like some of the residents in the Pine Grove Aged Care Centre, Bloom can be a bit lame. Handed caricatures rather than characters, the actors sometimes grasp after laughs, rather than trusting material that’s punctuated with genuinely funny lines. I’ve seen this phenomenon in comedy before, but not usually from people of this calibre: familiarity breeds doubt in the jokes, and everyone starts trying too hard to compensate, when what was really required was a lighter touch from all concerned.

It’s rather odd because Bloom, a new Australian musical that premiered for Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023, boasts some considerable talents. Tom Gleisner, long-established among our top comedy writers – in film, think The Castle and The Dish; on TV, Utopia and the timeless Frontline – here makes his first splash in the musical theatre pond, with music by Katie Weston. Then there’s Dean Bryant, one of our finest directors of musicals, and actors including John Waters, Christie Whelan Browne, John O’May and Jackie Rees.

The story concerns the tyrannical Mrs MacIntyre (Whelan Browne) running Pine Grove to gouge profits against her residents’ wellbeing. She finds an unqualified student, Finn (Slone Sudiro), to enjoy free board in return for helping share the care. He becomes chummy with rebellious new resident Rose (Evelyn Krape), and from there we meet the rest of the tribe, their carers and their quirks.

But the story can seem stuck in a spiral, like the residents’ lives. Rather than being heavy-handed with types, Gleisner could have brought his usual deftness to three-dimensional characters – a flaw magnified at every turn. Weston’s music is routinely so busy that the main area of conflict is not in the plot, it’s between the words and the music.

Weston opted for pop songs, and Zara Stanton has orchestrated them for a sextet led by Lucy Bermingham, when had they just been played by say, a piano, bass and clarinet, they might have achieved some buoyancy and possibly even pathos as a counterpoint to the comedy. When the songs do try to be deep and meaningful, they merely become mawkish.

Easily the best is The Story of My Life, in which each resident gives us a snapshot of their rich pasts, contrasting with their current hollowed-out existences, and which also gives us a reminder of Rees’ lustrous voice, as she plays Lesley, an artist who has the hots for Waters’ tongue-tied Doug.

Then there are exquisite little cameos, as when Rose tries to give Finn, a music student, some idea of the point of music, beyond getting the notes in the right order. And Gleisner being Gleisner, gags abound, as when the aged care inspector (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i) arrives, and McIntyre hisses to her staff, “Look caring!”

Finally, there’s the poignancy that the music misses. “Do you know what the hardest part about being in this place is?” Doug asks Finn. “No one needs you.”

MUSIC
Abel Selaocoe, Australian Chamber Orchestra
City Recital Hall, April 5
Reviewed PETER McCALLUM
★★★★

Cellist, singer and composer Abel Selaocoe started the program with an improvised introduction, singing freely and clearly in the high register, then moving to an abrasive throat sound that cut the air like a saw, before blending vocalisations and open cello sounds into a texture of layered richness.

In an innovative joining of vocal and instrumental artistic practice, he explored plucked patterns, wispy sounds and virtuosic arpeggios on the cello, and falsetto, rasping rhythms and multiphonic shouts from his voice, closing with a remarkable alternation of high and low vocal phrases in which one could imagine his voice was actually a cello string being unwound.

Pulling together cultural strands from South African church practices and the European classical tradition, Selaocoe’s performance style is audacious, energised and fun. In Qhawe (a Sesotho word for “hero”), the ACO players sang in harmony while Selaocoe pitched visceral vocal interjections over the top. For Tshepo, Selaocoe used hand gestures and exuberant assertiveness to teach the entire audience a short modal hymn that accompanied his own vocal riffs.

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In between, he played an 18th-century Cello Concerto in D by Giovanni Platti. His cello playing was breathlessly fast in the first movement and crisply energised in the third, although the line in the slow movement swelled distractingly, impeding expressive simplicity. Percussionist Sidiki Dembélé added taut rhythmic punctuation and colour on the djembe and a variety of other instruments and led an improvised introduction to the concerto’s slow movement.

To close the first half, Selaocoe and Dembele left the stage and the ACO, under sensitive leadership from Helena Rathbone, gave the premier of a Nigel Westlake’s Ascension. Dedicated to his mother Heather Westlake (an ACO violinist in its formative years), and taking Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending as its model, the work started with finely scored chordal passages before Rathbone commenced tentative upward-reaching phrases that became a symbolic homage to both Vaughan Williams and the dedicatee.

The accompanying string textures suddenly developed quiet, scintillating energy, leading to a reflective new idea played by viola and violin in tender dialogue. The work displayed Westlake’s characteristically refined scoring and touchingly genuine expressiveness.

The second half began with Bernard Rofe’s arrangement for strings of Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, which were effective in the third piece though slightly thin elsewhere. Selaocoe’s Lerato led without a break to five selections from When We Were Trees by Giovanni Sollima (also showcased in a recent program by the Omega Ensemble).

Selaocoe and the ACO’s Timo-Veikko Valve created haunting atmospherics in the first and third excerpts and played the second, fourth and fifth with increasingly virtuosic wildness as though possessed. The last work, Selaocoe’s Ka Bohaleng (On the Sharp Side) is named after a Sesotho saying, “a woman holds the knife on the sharp side”, expressed suggestively by the barking edge at the bottom of Selaocoe’s range. With sung response and a clapped beat from both ACO and audience, its frenetic close brought an already excited audience to its feet.

MUSIC
MALLRAT
Enmore Theatre, April 3
Reviewed by CINDY YIN
★★★★

Light is the leading motif throughout this show.

Spotlights flash, bend and illuminate 26-year-old Grace Shaw’s (aka Mallrat) outline, until the beams of light almost take on a life of their own as they waltz in harmony with her frame. It’s fitting, given the Brisbane artist’s second album is titled Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right.

Mallrat’s whimsical “weirdo appeal” music is charming. As she leaps across the stage in the introspective, mellow, yet hopeful Pavement, her performance captures perfectly the inner turmoil of a 20-something dreamer.

Groceries is undoubtedly the favourite of the night, with its nonsensical and wistful lyrics eliciting a room full of emotions as the audience chants in unison, “I just wanna get groceries/I’ll pray you wanna get close to me”.

The upbeat Surprise, featuring recorded verses from rapper Azealia Banks, provided a welcome change of pace, alongside sugary hyperpop track Hocus Pocus and Mallrat’s feature on R U HIGH, an electric stunner from US duo The Knocks.

Light once again envelops her in the sombre The Light Streams in and Hits My Face, morphing from purple, to yellow, back to violet, underscoring the short yet captivating track. It is a stark contrast to the moodier Teeth – where, as Mallrat’s melodic, sirenlike wails crescendo into something more akin to agitation, the lights flash in jarring sequences.

Horses is indisputably the night’s standout performance. It is the nostalgic closing track on her album, where she reflects on her childhood days in Brisbane catching the train home from school with little sister Olivia – recorded before her death last year. It’s raw, emotional and feels like we are not listening to Mallrat the musician, but perhaps the real Grace Shaw.

MUSIC
The Jungle Giants
Metro Theatre, April 4
Reviewed by NICK NEWLING
★★★½

Jungle Giants frontman Sam Hales, a youthful mix of Peter Garrett and Freddie Mercury, takes charge from the get-go ceaselessly bopping back and forth across the stage and holding his hands to the sky as if leading a congregation.

His devotees are along for the ride and he quickly gets them going with call-and-response and jubilant foot thumping during opener On Your Way.

Early in the concert the Hales addressed the car crash and resulting surgery that meant he had to pull out of Tasmania’s Bass in the Domain festival last month. But any lingering effects of the accident were not apparent in his performance or his raspy, poppy vocals and impressive falsetto.

This tour takes its title from latest single Hold My Hand, whose repetitive nature unfortunately provided the low point of the night. Hales said that writing the song — about the recent breakup of a long-term relationship — was a “cathartic” experience, but for the audience it slowed the pace of a largely upbeat set.

The highs came in two tracks, She’s a Riot (from the band’s 2013 debut Learn to Exist), and Heavy Hearted (a 2019 single tacked on to 2021’s Love Signs). Both numbers showed off the band’s range in a set that otherwise felt a little samey.

She’s a Riot tells an upbeat story of loving a woman who’s “well known to police”, and proved a celebration of chaotic youthful abandon.

And the crowd’s exuberant response to Heavy Hearted, which closed out the set and might be the most musically diverse of the band’s offerings, tested the Metro’s foundations.

Overall, it was a strong return to the stage for the band, especially considering Hales’ recent trials. But with so many songs feeling so similar, this show was mainly one for hardcore fans.

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