GROUNDHOG DAY THE MUSICAL
Princess Theatre, Melbourne
February 1
★★★★

Naturally, I’d have to see the Groundhog Day musical over and over to write the perfect review. Still, I can say that director Matthew Warchus and our own Tim Minchin gave themselves a hard act to follow with their fabulous musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Their collaboration here doesn’t disappoint, rejigging the balance of cynicism and sentimentality in a way that should appeal even to those sceptical of the 1993 film.

That cultural touchstone premiered when I was in year 12 and still trapped on Melbourne’s suburban fringe. I had very mixed feelings about it back then. Nothing felt more like the scenario in Groundhog Day than being an arrogant prick on the cusp of adulthood, powerless to avoid living in Hicksville. Still, the sense of identification corroded into alienation – at least for a closeted queer kid – as the story collapsed into a conventional white-bread hetero romcom, within a small-town frame drenched in folksy sentiment.

Luckily, sardonic wit is Tim Minchin’s bread-and-butter. His talent for mordant humour leaves no stone unturned, and Warchus – who has directed Dickens’ parable A Christmas Carol two years in a row in Melbourne – is a master at making unlikely redemption work onstage. The film’s original screenwriter, Danny Rubin, also flirts with darker tonal shifts than the movie allowed, drawing out the philosophical thought experiment in the story.

Everyone knows the premise. Phil Connors (Andy Karl) is a cynical weatherman on assignment, covering Groundhog Day in the tiny Pennsylvanian town of Punxsutawney. The February 2 holiday features a groundhog (also called Phil) predicting the end of winter – an end that may never come for Connors, who gets stuck in a recursive time loop, doomed to repeat the same day ad nauseam.

As the loop repeats, Connors realises he faces no consequences for his actions and goes the full Dorian Gray – gratifying hedonistic desires, robbing banks, accumulating knowledge about the women in the town so that he can manipulate and seduce them more effectively, and so on.

No trick he tries can win the heart of his producer Rita (Elise McCann), however, and his amoral decadence quickly gets old. Tedium and loneliness eventually drive Connors to elaborate methods of suicide (realised in this production through an eye-widening sequence of stage illusions). But even death has no lasting effect, and only a Scrooge-like conversion to self-improvement, loving life, and helping others with no prospect of recognition or reward can set him free.

Much rests on Karl’s performance. He’s great as Connors. Magnetic and seductively awful, charged with a charismatic polarity that turns on a dime from negative to positive and back again, Karl straddles the conflicting roles of antagonist and hero with ease.