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Evie May review

  • Theatre, Musicals
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
  1. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  2. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  3. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  4. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  5. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  6. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
  7. Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
    Photograph: Supplied/Nik Damianakis
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Time Out says

3 out of 5 stars

This new musical takes on an intriguing slice of Australian theatrical history

1966. The last night of the legendary Tivoli circuit. Singer Evie May takes her final bow and retreats to her dressing room for one last drink with Cole, her dresser. Television has, effectively, killed the vaudeville star.

Where else can Evie May (Amanda Harrison) go but back into the past? Prompted by the earnest questions of Cole (Keegan Joyce), Evie drifts back in time… 

And becomes Evelyn May Murphy (Loren Hunter) all over again: young, stuck in regional Western Australia, and sneaking off to Perth to see a variety show. One broken heart and several family issues later, Evelyn is off to Sydney to find a life of her own under the stage lights.

This new Australian musical, written with sensitivity upon nostalgia-flecked theatrical folk-pop landscape by Naomi Livingston (music and lyrics) and Hugo Chiarella (book and lyrics), re-writes showbiz history to reveal the minefield of compromise, risk and reward that awaited women from the 1930s through to the ‘60s who dared to dream. And it throws the spotlight squarely on two queer women: our lead, Evie, and the woman she falls for.  

With a solid book and the biggest heart in the world, it’s hard not to love the characters. There’s the bright, ambitious, country-bred Evie; Harrison and Hunter play her at different stages of her life with intelligence, wit and compassion, and she manages making telling people not to “hang around like a wet fart” endearing.

And then there’s June – a luminous, irresistible Bishaniya Vincent – a singer with a wry smile, killer wit, and the kind of magnetism that can make your heart ache. She’s notes on dyke camp personified.  

The men are charming (what with Joyce’s keen Cole, Tim Draxl’s wounded digger and Jo Turner’s slew of men abusing their power) but they can’t hold a candle to two Evies and a June, surviving the world in the best way they know. 

Champion directs the show like it’s a love letter to Evie – her love interests come and go, but in the audience, we’re the ones being romanced. Evie is the main event, whether she’s centre stage singing about the view from here to her dreams, or if she’s her older self, watching her memories play out with fondness and sympathetic pain. 

Chiarella’s book leans toward the perfunctory, and doesn’t quite rise to the lovely, generous quality of the score. Some of Evie’s dialogue with the men around her feels pre-packaged, like we’ve heard it before in plenty of musicals, and the show tends to sacrifice the tension of an escalating situation to surprise us with a plot twist; by leaning more into the beginnings of desire and betrayal of two pivotal love scenes, we would be watching a richer, and deeper show – instead, we’re left often at face value. (A more nuanced depiction of an early meet-cute between a teenager and a much older man, for example, would make it easier to swallow).

Still, these are fixable problems, and the fabric of the show and the Evie May world is a strong one. And there are moments that shine, notes that hang in the air shimmering like crystal (Hunter could make you weep with a sustained note), and an honest approach to self-discovery and self-determination that’s easy to root for.  

Steven Kreamer’s musical direction – he also created the orchestrations and arrangements, alongside Max Lamber’s musical supervision – flow out of the concealed band with liquid ease. Plus if you’re a sucker for a Radclyffe Hall joke, there are two of them. If you’re a single queer woman, here’s a tip: go along to the show, and keep an eye on whom else in the audience has a little chuckle.

The production design (by Anna Gardiner) is smartly spare; this is a memory play, and our focus is on character rather than fixed time and space. Bright red letters spell out TIVOLI – it’s there, looming large, until Evie leaves the theatre.

Sian James-Holland’s lights take us from Western Australia to our very own Sydney; in a stunning moment, warm desert plain sun slants over Evelyn’s face – her life is just beginning, and although we know she’s in for some hard years, we feel the beauty that lies in a first taste of freedom.

Written by
Cassie Tongue

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Price:
$60-$65
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