Starstruck

An unlikely follow-up to My Brilliant Career, this comic rock opera in which two weirdo kids from downtown Sydney stare hungrily across the bay to where the talons of the Opera House beckon, promising fame and fortune in a talent contest. Jackie (Kennedy) can sing but no one will listen, until her cousin Angus (O'Donovan), a dwarfish Svengali, persuades her to don a bird costume and tightrope walk high above a busy street. From that angle her star quality, like her false plastic tits, sticks out a mile (opportune knockers, as the TV show almost had it). Although at times a little ragged around the edges, the whole is so persistently bizarre, and the two leads so consistently excellent, that the plusses (her voice, his legs, their spit-and-sawdust family) quickly outweigh the minuses (some dire set pieces and some ugly, ugly people). Alternately cudgelled and cajoled, one cannot help but have a good time.