A new musical based on the novel by Miles Franklin. Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks. Musical director Victoria Falconer. Choreographer Amy Campbell. Melbourne Theatre Company. Canberra Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre. March 7-15.
My Brilliant Career is a long show with a grand vision and thanks in very great part to the almost never off the stage performance of Kala Gare as Sybylla Melvyn it certainly has impact. This Sybylla is very hard to ignore.
Not that the other performers are slouches. There are heaps of tightly observed characters in this world created originally in Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel and the show is teeming with arrogant squatters and horrible children and long suffering wives and people going broke. Everyone’s on the verge of losing the lot. They comment on the out of work blokes drifting by, casualties of forces they cannot control.
Some may take issue with the modern perceptions and the anachronisms in the costuming but there’s an energy that never flags. Everyone appears to play a musical instrument, even the techies are roped in to do the occasional bit of performance. There’s agreeable songs but they don’t particularly stick in the memory.
Sybylla doesn’t have too many choices. It’s a bit like Jane Eyre. When things get tough on the family farm in Possum Gully she’s sent off to affluent relatives to be groomed for and tested in the marriage market. At least she’s a reader and has picked up some piano skills. When her relatives run into financial troubles she’s packed off to be a governess to the huge and horrible McSwat tribe, a family who have no elegance nor learning whatsoever.
The handsome and charming Harry (Raj Labade) is certainly an attraction but the compromises might prove too much for her need for independence.
It’s all a bit of a surface take on a novel that has quite a bit more to say about the strictures on women and the general nature of Australian society at the turn of the 20th century. The show has reflective moments but sometimes seems more interested in how many ways the central piano can be climbed over. And the occasional sense that the central character is aware of a future where things might improve for a young woman blunts the anger.
The performers, with Gare’s rambunctious performance leading the way, do a good job with a big range of roles. But you might want to go and read the novel. What’s missing here is that anger and a certain fire that sits in Miles Franklin’s voice.
Alanna Maclean
