The Show: LoveMusik based on the book by Albert Uhry, Music by Kurt Weill
The Theatre: Downstair at the Belvoir Street Theatre
The Company: Neglected Musicals
Stars: 5
The limited run ends tonight. (24-28 June)
A couple of things happened last night. I caught up with a friend from my writing retreats. We went to see a show. I got to see a phenomenal piece of theatre. What more do you want?
Seeing this was a pure fluke. I like to see interesting theatre, but Sydney can be a bit of a cultural backwater. The one show that mildly interesting me was David Wenham in The Iliad, but the ticket prices were too steep. Then I looked up what the Belvoir Street Theatre was doing and this came out. A musical about Kurt Weill and his wife, Lotte Lenya. It had a four-day run in their smaller space. At $70 a ticket, it fit the bill. Even more so, my friend is a German teacher and there were some German themes that ran through this.
We turned up. the 80-seater theatre was full. On the small stage there were a number of chairs, with some props underneath and a keyboard.
For the next two hours we were mesmerised.
What I didn't know before seeing this was that the company behind this performance, Neglected Musicals, is a company that does just this - it takes musicals which are rarely performed, or never been performed in Australia. They go on a very limited run. The cast get one day's rehearsal, they go on, script in hand with a piano accompanist.
Theatre by the seat of your pants stuff.
A very talented professional cast.
Utter magic.
The musical revolves around the lives of the composer Kurt Weill (best known for writing the music for Mack the Knife) and his wife, Lotte Lenya and Weill's relationship with Bertholt Brecht.
Weill and Lenya's life is striking. Fraught, poignant, and incredibly interesting. The musical takes them from the excesses of the Weimar Republic, to their escape to America in the 1930s, to Weill's burgeoning celebrity, to life in New York and Hollywood, to Weill's death in 1950. This musical covers a lot of ground.
I was blown away within minutes.
The music was great. The story cohesive. The fact that the actors had a day's rehearsal to put on a musical of this calibre is incredible.
This is theatre by the seat of your pants. Looking at the cast's bios, there was a lot of musical theatre experience. This shone through. This was performed by a group of actors at the top of their game.
Most daftly, the cast wouldn't take a second curtain call. No idea why. They had the whole audience by the heart.
In some ways, this reminded me of shows that La Mama or The Red Stitch Actors Theatre put on. It's great to know that Sydney has such an outlet.
For me, I'm just honoured that I got to see this on this limited run. As somebody who doesn't normally like musicals, this one fit the bill.
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