This show, also known as ‘Shout!The Mod Musical’, was plenty of fun as it celebrated all things sixties, especally the music.

DOWNTOWN is  set in London in the swinging sixties and follows the lives of five women varying in ages from their twenties to their forties through to the early seventies. They each face tricky situations in their personal lives and each during the course of the play consult  an advice columnist who works for Shout! Magazine, their social bible.

The Wollongong based Arcadians Theatre Group have astutely chosen this show as  good winter fare keeping our spirits warm as we thrill to the music of that legendary decade.

The show has been smartly directed by Kerrie Martin with musical direction by Valerie Hull and choreography by Pauline Young.The staging was compact with only a small stage to work with. The downstage area was left free for the performers to work in. The stage floor was patterned with a spectrum of colours. There were some stools  stage right and a few steps stage left for performers to ‘balance on’.

A few steps led to the upstage area which was used a lot during the show, with performers entering from either of the two wings. Thwen behind there was a stage wide backdrop of a city tower scape. The band comprising three players, two keyboard players and one drummer, were positioned behind the backdrop.

The tone of the show was humorously satirical as we watched the women constantly try to keep up with the latest fashions and lifestyle trends of the day. There was a definite zippy Laugh In (The Dan Rowan and Dick Martin tv show) feel to the show, especially in the fast paced dialogue and exchanges between numbers.

There were plenty of gems such as one of the women saying ‘It takes me three and a half hours to put on my make-up, what you see is the natural look’ which got plenty of audience laughs. There was a cute pot smoking scene, an acerbic scene advertising the benefits of women taking the pill so that they too could enjoy the sexual revolution taking place even though the pill came with harmful/distressing side effects.

Twiggy was described by one of the women as being ‘an emaciated boy in a dress.’ Wait till you set your eyes on the fashion horrorscope….

DOWNTOWN featured a great sixties soundtrack. So many favourite numbers were given rousing singalong type renditions by the cast. Just to name a few songs- the title song “Downtown’, ‘Colour My World’, ‘These Boots are made for Walkin’, ‘To Sir with Love’, ‘Those were the Days’, ‘Georgy Girl’,  and ‘Pictures from the Past’. There was a great version of the ‘title track’,  ‘Shout!’

A good cast kept up a great energy through the show. In the main cast Jennifer Bond played Orange Girl (each of the main characters simply had a colour as a name- how sixties), a woman in her forties who is suspecting her husband is cheating on her. Jesse Cleal played gorgeous Blue Girl who is wealthy but questions her sexuality. Heather Mitchell plays Red Girl, the youngest of the women and with her plain looks and stern black rimmed glasses is worried if she will ever find a man. Marilyn Waugh plays Yellow Girl, the only American woman in the show who has travelled over to the UK to see if she can get a glimpse of Paul McCartney! Elizabeth Gross plays Green (turquoise) Girl the raciest of the women, always hooking up with guys and speaking coarsely.

Loretta Reid comes across strongly in a great role as the arch, prim and proper Agony Aunt columnist Gwendolyn Holmes, aptly dressed in a gray suit and wig. The audience was very pleased when she gets her comeuppance in the end for all her tawdrid advice.

The Go Go girls are played by Mikaela Hiscox, Dominique McGovern, Isabella Panozzo and Matilda Wood.

Recommended, DOWNTOWN THE MOD MUSICAL, created by Phillip George, David Lowenstein and Peter Charles Morris and originally performed Off-Broadway, is playing the Miner’s Lamp Theatre, 141 Princess Highway, Corrimal,  until June 23, 2018.  The remaining performances are this Thursday 21 June at 8pm, Friday 22 June at 8pm and Saturday 23 June at 2pm and 8pm.

http://arcadians.org.au/