THE SUNSHINE CLUB, ★★★
Sydney Coliseum Theatre, April 12
Reviewed by Kate Prendergast

Race relations in Australia very often make grim subject matter. Our history and present are full of violent acts and unjust realities. Yet at the turn of the century, Noonuccal Nuugi man and acclaimed theatre-maker Wesley Enoch chose to tell a story of radiant hope.

The Sunshine Club, with music by John Rodgers, embraces the optimism and energy of musical theatre for a feel-good, hip-swinging romance. Set in 1946, it centres on an Indigenous serviceman called Frank Doyle (Garret Lyon, with a honeyed voice that hits high) who returns to his small Queensland town to find not a hero’s welcome, but the same old prejudices.

Barred from the whites-only dance hall, and falling hard for the white Reverend’s daughter Rose (a flawless Claire Warrillow), Doyle creates his own place for folk to come together. Inside this haven called The Sunshine Club, he and his community celebrate their right to work, dance, and love.

It’s a simple story borne along by 28 upbeat tunes, which encourages the audience to think about how dreams and sacrifices depend a great deal on the privilege you’re starting from. The courtship between Doyle’s sister Pearl (Tehya Makani) and a slimy travelling salesman (Rune Nydal) is a piercing foil to the main romance. With Aunty Faith (played by the much-loved Roxanne McDonald) and the ostensibly open-minded Reverend (Dale Pengelly) full of their own respective fears, it’s also an intergenerational tale that proposes even youth’s naivety can motivate change.

The Sunshine Club won multiple awards and an original place in the nation’s storytelling canon. Twenty-five years later, it is riding an Australia-wide tour under Enoch’s hand, with an Indigenous-led cast and a five-piece live band.

After shows in Dubbo, Burnie, Melbourne and dozens more, it landed at Rooty Hill’s new Sydney Coliseum Theatre, an architectural marvel with a 2000-seat auditorium. Such a grand space demands a great deal, and Friday’s show didn’t have the requisite dynamism or vocal might to equal it.

This can be fatal in musical theatre – present anything less than the full gusto, and its magic trembles. That several actors (Colin Smith and Leeroy Tipiloura) didn’t feature in this performance also gives a clue.

When the band is revealed behind a shimmering curtain, the play is at its lively best.
Crowd-pleasing and defiantly positive in the post-referendum gloom, The Sunshine Club had just one night in Rooty Hill. It travels to South Australia next.

MUSIC
BRING ME THE HORIZON ★★★½
Qudos Bank Arena, April 12
Reviewed by Michael Ruffles

This is not your father’s deathcore band. In a world only slightly more twisted than this one, Bring Me The Horizon would be pop stars.

The British rockers bombard with metal riffs and driving rhythms, all led with Oli Sykes’ alternately wild and guttural screams and with a backdrop of apocalyptic imagery, lasers and pyrotechnics. They explore the depths of human loneliness and pain, and offer catharsis through a chaotic and contagious crowd experience.

But they do it with variety, pace and humour, and some memorable tunes to boot.

The theatrics were amped up from the outset, making the shortcomings of recent single Darkside more forgivable, and the crowd-surfing and mosh pit really kicked into gear for the anthemic one-two punch of Mantra and Teardrops.

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The best moments were from 2020’s excellent Post Human: Survival Horror and 2013’s Sempiternal. Kingslayer is frenetic and electrifying; Obey is equal parts bitter and subversive; the chest-pumping call and response of “we’re going nowhere” in Shadow Moses speaks for a generation; Can You Feel My Heart? is slowly turning into a classic.

The new material is more mixed in style. Die4u is essentially a pop song with a few metal edges, it could be on the soundtrack to an animated Spider-Man film.

Then there’s Strangers: with its sad singer-songwriter vibes and (gasp) acoustic guitar, it might have fallen out of one of Ed Sheeran’s better albums.

Skyes singled out a crowd member to join him on stage. The last time I saw this trick, it was Justin Bieber making one girl less lonely (and I’m not sure whether that says more about them or me).

The evolution of Bring Me The Horizon from hardcore metal subgenre specialists to alternative turncoats to rock-star stadium sensation is complete. The next stop may well be the pop charts.

Sykes and co cover themselves in metal and spiky attitude, but their best trick is writing hooks that stay with you even after the ringing in your ears has gone away.

Bring Me The Horizon play Qudos Bank Arena again on Sunday.

THEATRE
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM ★★½
Centennial Park, April 11. Until April 28
Reviewed by Kate Prendergast

Under the chilly black dome of an autumn night, down the grassy steppes of the Centennial Park amphitheatre, a Nickelodeonesque production of Shakespeare’s 400-plus-year-old Midsummer Night’s Dream japes. Aside from the goofball merit of some individual performances, the muddled sum of Glenn Elston’s three-hour show’s parts is chintzy, uneven and patience-trying. There is a difference between making the bard more accessible, and swaddling his wit in juvenile faff.

The Duke of Athens here and his betrothed are classless high-rollers, and the four entangled lovers not much more than privileged brats. In mortal and divine realms, the costumes are garish – from gold-threaded couture tracksuits, to Hermia’s hideous hot pink ensemble, to fairy diadems that look like something you’d buy half-drunk off a charlatan vendor at Vivid.

The stage gives a lot of echoing space to the natural surrounds, with tiered scaffolding draped with fake foliage framing the stage. The most impressive production gambit is the vehicles (buggies and boys’ toys) which zoom up and off ramps, at times with a thrillingly reckless bounce.

Zeitgeisty add-ons reach for easy laughs, like when Puck (played by Jonathan Freeman as a kind of raggedy, bow-legged fool) lures one of Titania’s servants away with a gigantic Taylor Swift ticket.

Another grating modernisation, my pet hate in crowd pandering, is the way in which worn-out tracks like James Brown’s I Feel Good, the Pink Panther theme, and Zorba the Greek are summoned and scrapped in just a few bars, all for a cheap jolt of recognition.

The music composition has an uninspired whimsy, making use of xylophone zings. Some cringey choreography involves a conga line and an aborted group dance.

You can still walk away with a good impression of some of the cast. Alex Cooper is a fine buffoon as both a love-struck Lysander and muscle-bulging Tom Snout.

Larissa Teal is a sulky, ditzy Helena. Jackson McGovern goes all in with “mummy’s boy with wandering knight aspirations”, and Tane Williams Accra amuses playing cowardly and camp.

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Madeleine Somers (a bumptious Peter Quince) and Elizabeth Brennan (a blokey Red Bull-chugging Bottom) stand out in their gender-flexed roles. The significant edits to Shakespeare’s script are best during the “play within a play” scenes, if mostly in service of bum jokes.

In a tighter, abridged version, this Australian Shakespeare Company’s Dream could be a delight for kids. But what child is out and shivering until 10pm?

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