More cheeky than challenging, more silly than serious – but Heathers the Musical is irresistible

Musical: Heathers the Musical ★★★★By Cassie TongueRoslyn Packer Theatre, September 1, until September 19Before the curtain had even risen on Sydney’s opening night of the Asia Pacific tour of Heathers the Musical, the merch line was packed with fans, some already boasting thematic scrunchies and (in some cases) full Heather cosplay. After the show, the line to meet the cast at the stage door was even longer. When people love Heathers, they love it with everything they’ve got – and this production won’t disappoint them.Based on the acerbic 1988 cult film where high school power struggles turn into murders staged as suicides, the pop-rock musical landed with buzz off-Broadway back in 2014 and was fast-tracked to Sydney in a well-received production for the Hayes Theatre. A West End cast recording and professional film capture (streaming on HBO Max), helped grow the show’s passionate fanbase. Over a decade later, it’s back off-Broadway and in Sydney too: re-imagined, re-tooled, and ready to knock your socks off.It is impossible to resist this new production of Heathers.Cameron Grant, ParenthesyThere’s a real ease to this production. Its pacing and shape, especially in the second act, has been tightened and improved by the original creative team. The cast – all excellent – are well settled into their roles. Associate director for the Asia Pacific tour, Matt Heyward, has kept a keen eye on character and the ensemble are fully dropped-in for each scene, maintaining high school hierarchies and cliquey quirks in the background – there are so many background gags and running ‘bits’ you might not catch them all.The Heathers in action: (from left) Amélia Rojas, Calista Nelmes and Abigail Sharp.Cameron Grant, ParenthesyThis tour also offers a Heathers that’s still edgy (well, musical theatre edgy) but is less cruel than its original outing. Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, who wrote the book, music and lyrics, have cut the comedy song Blue that made light of sexual assault and replaced it with a number that gives the girl dodging those advances back her power. Slurs have also been cut, and the meanest jokes have been blunted. There’s plenty of audacity – it’s now just causing a little less harm to its audience. There’s now even a little more gravitas to bullied Martha Dunnstock, played winsomely here by Mel O’Brien (perhaps best known as half of comedy duo Mel & Sam).The band, led by Martine Wengrow, is loud, rollicking and delightfully brash. Ben Cracknell’s lights are mischievous and bold; both elements are playful – it feels, charmingly, like they are egging on all the drama.Veronica Sawyer (Emma Caporaso, in blue), ingratiates herself with the “Heathers” (Calista Nelmes, Amelia Rojas and Abigail Sharp).Ruby AlexanderIt’s all so very much, but the cast rises to the occasion. These are powerhouse leads who make a meal out of every joke and find new spins on old insults. Newcomer Emma Caporaso is an instant star as Veronica Sawyer – naturally funny, big-voiced, seemingly endless energy – and Calista Nelmes finds new and surprisingly arch shades of queen bee Heather Chandler. Conor Beaumont has a lighter take on brooding bad boy JD that builds nicely towards darkness, and across the board there’s a real sense of freshness and full-bodied commitment.This cast is going to give you one hell of a show. It’s more cheeky than challenging, more silly than serious, and very easy to like. There’s no use in resisting.3.21pmHow to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ★★★½By John ShandHayes Theatre, September 2, until September 27Don’t you hate it when the career seas seem to part for some people, and they glide from pinnacle to pinnacle, with no fear of drowning in drudgery or obscurity? J Pierrepont Finch is such a person. A window washer for a New York corporation, he reads a book called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and, following it step by step, rises inexorably to be chairman (this being the early ’60s) of the board. He also gets the girl, of course, and evades any consequences for shafting others along the way.Jake Speer brings a goofy ingénue vibe to the role.John McRaeStopping us from hating him are Frank Loesser’s music and lyrics, Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert’s book (based on a satirical manual by Shepherd Mead) and Jake Speer’s performance. Finch is both cunning and lucky, while the actor has to add the third, endearing dimension: being a goofy ingenue. So we cheer him as we might a hurdler who, with a shambling action, not only clears all the jumps, but wins the race.When the musical first aired in 1961, it cleaned up the Tony Awards, and even won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. That, presumably, was because of the keen blade it inserts between the ribs of corporatism and capitalism. Nonetheless, the competition must have been thin because it would struggle to make many people’s top 30 musicals, and most of those didn’t win Pulitzer Prizes.3.21pmThe Shark is Broken ★★★½By Cassie TongueFoundry Theatre, September 2, until October 4.Onstage at the Foundry Theatre, the intimate space tucked behind the Sydney Lyric at the Star, characters are stranded in a liminal space. Waiting for something.Godot? No. They’re waiting for a prop shark named Bruce to stop malfunctioning so they can finish shooting a movie that has run over time and way over budget. You might have heard of it: Jaws. Tom Stokes, Robin Goldsworthy and Anthony Gooley are stuck waiting in The Shark Is Broken. David HooleyThis is The Shark is Broken, a gently funny and mildly philosophical take on acting, art, commerce and conflict. Written by Joseph Nixon and Ian Shaw – whose father, Robert, played shark-hunting Quint in the film – it traps us on the open water with the lead cast. Shaw (Anthony Gooley), Roy Scheider (Tom Stokes) and Richard Dreyfuss (Robin Goldsworthy) sit out passing ships and technical difficulties for weeks on end, bonds and tempers tested over and over in those tight-quartered conditions.yesterday 3.24pmMusic: Lucas & Arthur Jussen in Recital, presented by Sydney Symphony ‏★★★★½By Peter McCallumOpera House Concert Hall, August 31 This was more than just counting three in a bar and being careful not to step on your partner’s toes. With heads down and fingers hyperactively busy, duo pianists and brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen drew on an invisible line of telepathic communication across the two grand pianos as they dragged and propelled the surging phrases of Ravel’s La Valse into convulsive shapes to burst into climaxes, each overreaching the one before.Lucas and Arthur Jussen at the Opera House. Even the murky textures of Ravel’s amorphous opening had distinctive clarity and, as the piece progressed, it was as though the pair were constantly pulling the reins to restrain an emerging mood of brooding wildness. In the orchestral version of this masterpiece, Ravel’s genius lies in creating a continuous build-up of tension while always keeping something in reserve, and in the composer’s version for two pianos the Jussens sustained that arc with sinuous shades and glittering pianistic precision right up to the frenetic close.The recital opened with the duo seated at a single piano for the simpler but nevertheless captivating gestures of Mozart’s Sonata in D major for piano, four hands, K381/123a. Its three movements progressed graciously with well-shaped phrases, nuanced contrast and impeccable ensemble playing. In Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor, D 940, also for piano, four hands, and written in the last year of that composer’s short life, they adopted a restrained tempo, unemphatic dynamics and a spacious approach that highlighted the work’s melancholy frame – although, for me, the work has even greater haunting charm if allowed slightly more forward movement.After interval the Jussens swapped pianos for a splintering performance of Stravinsky’s two-piano version of The Rite of Spring. Conductors have been known to come unstuck attempting this work from memory but, playing without a score (as they had done for the whole program), the Jussens brewed its incantatory quiet passages and chiselled out the brittle logic of its ferocious irregular rhythms with undeviating focus.Even with the Concert Hall packed to capacity, an encore seemed an unreasonable demand after such peaks of pianism. Nevertheless they smilingly and serenely obliged with a four-hands arrangement of Bach’s Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106.Pinned post from yesterday 3.24pmMusical: Heathers the Musical ★★★★By Cassie TongueRoslyn Packer Theatre, September 1, until September 19Before the curtain had even risen on Sydney’s opening night of the Asia Pacific tour of Heathers the Musical, the merch line was packed with fans, some already boasting thematic scrunchies and (in some cases) full Heather cosplay. After the show, the line to meet the cast at the stage door was even longer. When people love Heathers, they love it with everything they’ve got – and this production won’t disappoint them.Based on the acerbic 1988 cult film where high school power struggles turn into murders staged as suicides, the pop-rock musical landed with buzz off-Broadway back in 2014 and was fast-tracked to Sydney in a well-received production for the Hayes Theatre. A West End cast recording and professional film capture (streaming on HBO Max), helped grow the show’s passionate fanbase. Over a decade later, it’s back off-Broadway and in Sydney too: re-imagined, re-tooled, and ready to knock your socks off.It is impossible to resist this new production of Heathers.Cameron Grant, ParenthesyThere’s a real ease to this production. Its pacing and shape, especially in the second act, has been tightened and improved by the original creative team. The cast – all excellent – are well settled into their roles. Associate director for the Asia Pacific tour, Matt Heyward, has kept a keen eye on character and the ensemble are fully dropped-in for each scene, maintaining high school hierarchies and cliquey quirks in the background – there are so many background gags and running ‘bits’ you might not catch them all.