Theatre foyers these days are too often the province of the middle aged and older.  How refreshing it was to see such a young crowd mingling pre show. 

We had all come to see 13 THE MUSICA book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown,  which premiered on Broadway back in 2009.

The musical follows Evan Goldman’s journey. Evan is 12 and coming up to that landmark day in his thirteenth year when he has his Bar Mitzvah – when a Jewish boy becomes a man and receives heaps of presents and cash from his family and friends.

It’s all looks like smooth sailing for Evan but then a wild storm comes up to take him off course. His father has an affair with a stewardess, his mother announces that she will get a divorce, and on top of it all announces that they are leaving New York and going to move to Appleton in Illinois.

We watch Evan as he strives to cope with settling into a new town as a teenager with everything that this entails. His goal, to make it to his special day and to be able to celebrate it in style! 

13 THE MUSICAL proved to be a good yarn and with its score featuring nineteen catchy songs was a sound choice for Chatswood Musical Society’s innovative annual child/teenage focused production.

Heather Campbell’s production, with choreography by Justin Jarrett and musical direction by Jessica Manning, was vibrant and appealingly playful. Campbell accomplished quite a feat in managing to bring together some twenty four teenage performers on stage and get them to work together to come up with a cohesive and satisfying show.

The staging was streamlined and effective. The main stage area was left unimpeded except for cube like furniture pieces for the performers to sit down or stand up on. There was a well staged scene at the commencement of Act 2 which intimated a movie theatre with the kids seated looking at a large screen that was pulled down with the inference being that it was a movie screen and that they were enjoying a Saturday night at the movies!

Through the show Campbell had kids streaming down both flanks of the theatre as they bounded onto the stage.

A very hip band of teenage musos comprising Dylan Catterall on drums, Lachlan Bates on guitar, Tali Greenfield and Thomas Odeil on keyboards and Euan Welch on bass created plenty of heat through the show.

As the lead Evan Goldman, Kristian Babian did wonderfully well. His energy and focus never flagged.

Olivia McNamara impressed playing Patrice,who becomes Evan’s first firm friend after his move to Appleton. McNamara had a warm, assured presence on stage. 

Jude Paddon-Row proved to be an opening night audience favourite with his ‘sunny’ performance playing the high spirited Archie who doesn’t let his condition of muscular dystrophy weigh him down.  The rather ‘hammy’ way he used his crutches when moving across the stage added even more lightness to the performance.

The show did have some of the standard teenage characters, and the actors stepped into these parts well;  Savannah Clarke played the prettiest girl in school who all the guys wanted to date, Damien Hempstead played the sport jock who all the girls wanted to call their own, and Abby van Balkom played the super catty and competitive Lucy.

Rating. I gave this show an 11 out of 13!  It’s a shame that it only played for just the one weekend, from last Friday evening to the Sunday matinee.

Chatswood Musical Society’s next production will be Hot Mikado in September, also at the Independent Theatre.

I left the theatre with the chorus to a classic Australian pop song running around my brain. It was Joe Camilleri and his band Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons and their anthem to the exuberance of youth that had the chorus, ‘So young..so young..So god damn young’

http://www.chatswoodmusicalsociety.org.au