This new musical set during the marriage equality debate shines light on a grey time

MUSICAL
Bearded ★★★
Theatre Works, until January 18

This new queer musical bursts out of the closet in a whirlwind of colour, song and dance. It’s such a bright and bustling affair that there’s a hint of Dorothy arriving in Munchkin Land about it, although the show also returns us to a grey and vexatious time for the rainbow community.

Set in 2017 during Australia’s marriage equality debate, Bearded follows two queer teenagers as they navigate coming out.Credit: Jacob McCormack, Monkey Media

Set in 2017 during Australia’s marriage equality debate, Bearded follows two queer teenagers, Ace (Sean Donehue) and Bet (Bek Schilling), as they navigate coming out. It can be a nerve-racking process at the best of times, but for Bet, there’s the added complication of her dad, Richard (Anton Berezin), a socially conservative politician who’s running for office on (cough) “traditional family values”.

The last thing he wants is his daughter revealing she’s a lesbian in the middle of an election campaign. So poor Bet is dragooned into photo ops and campaign events, alongside her mum, Janet (Michelle Fitzmaurice), and Hailey (Belle Parkinson) to put on a public display of happy heteronormative domesticity.

It’s a stressful and depressing mask to maintain – especially as Bet is finally ready to date her first crush, Kelly (Charlie Jaz Abbott Higgins), and has banded together with school friends to support same-sex marriage.

When her closeted gay bestie Ace agrees to act as Bet’s beard and pretend to be her boyfriend in public, family secrets and adolescent sexual awakening collide on the road to queer liberation.

Joyful, colourful, exuberant: new musical Bearded is great for mid-summer and Midsumma.Credit: Jacob McCormack, Monkey Media

Creating and staging a full-length original musical is a huge undertaking, and Bearded is a talented stab at it. Some of it seems a touch derivative – a plot with similarities to La Cage aux Folles, worked into the angst and enthusiasm of teen coming-of-age musicals such as Hairspray or Dear Evan Hansen – but there are some wonderful numbers.

The quartet Family Matters has a musical and dramatic synergy that compels attention, and the climax – from Bet’s rousing coming-out song Storm to the defiant pride of the finale Queer as F--k! – will leave audiences on a high.

The production sports dynamic ensemble choreography and group vocals; a set festooned with conservative corflutes and rainbow bunting (with a few surprises to divert the eye); and a vibrant live orchestra.

More comedy wouldn’t hurt, and the suffering caused by homophobia could be more deeply elaborated. (Bet’s mum needs deeper characterisation if the happy ending isn’t to seem contrived, for instance.)

Perhaps the biggest annoyance is the venue’s challenging acoustics, which leaves some vocals barely audible over the music, but this all-singing, all-dancing indie musical has legs. It’s a fun night of queer pride as Melbourne heads into the Midsumma festival.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Finneas | For Cryin’ Out Loud! : The Tour ★★★
Forum Melbourne, January 13

Finneas Baird O’Connell, known mononymously as Finneas, takes a seat behind the piano as the crowd cheers.

Finneas performs at Forum Melbourne on January 13, 2025. Credit: Richard Clifford

The stage is illuminated in bright red as he launches into Starf--ker off his second album, For Cryin’ Out Loud! The song spins a story of a former partner who dated the American singer-songwriter for clout. Fans start singing along, emphatically yelling the lyric “But you’re a f---in’ narcissist”.

He is best known for his Grammy Award-winning work producing his sister Billie Eilish’s music, and those unfamiliar with the artist’s catalogue may expect a similar alt-pop sound. At one point, Finneas even introduces himself to the sold-out crowd, particularly, he states, for the plus-ones who tagged along.

There’s a difference between the music you produce for others and the music you make for yourself. The 27-year-old’s personal style resembles the soft, sentimental indie vibes of the ’90s and early 2000s as he sings about fame, heartbreak and family.

Listening to O’Connell’s latest album, you might expect a softer tone and pared-back performance, but the weight of the band and his impassioned vocals during the emotional highs invigorate the live experience.

There’s an overall wholesome vibe to the all-ages, alcohol-free gig.Credit: Richard Clifford

The show is a mix of piano and acoustic guitar-anchored ballads, such as Only a Lifetime from his debut album, Optimist, and Let’s Fall in Love for the Night from his 2019 debut EP, Blood Harmony. Poppier, upbeat tracks such as 2001 and Lotus Eater, named after a reference in Homer’s Odyssey, get O’Connell and the audience dancing along.

He performs duet Till Forever Falls Apart with vocalist Lucy Healey, which feels like an ode to the Los Angeles fires as they sing “if the tide takes California”.

The performer shares musings between songs about his favourite Melbourne cafe (Cam’s Kiosk in Abbotsford) and his love of “shit-talking”, discloses Healey’s fear of spiders (after a fan gives him a cork hat), and compliments the profundity of Australian cartoon Bluey (prompted by an audience member giving him a soft toy of the titular dog).

As O’Connell sips tea on stage, there’s a wholesome vibe to the all-ages, alcohol-free gig. There are no overindulgent theatrics, just the comfort and ease of a simple production and relatable, malaise-filled lyrics.

The fans add to the enjoyable ambience, singing along to every song until the end.

Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

MUSIC
Rufus Wainwright ★★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, until January 11

“I feel a little off tonight,” says Rufus Wainwright. He’s wearing a black boiler suit and shoes adorned with sequins, and sports dignified grey sideburns and a moustache. He mumbles, restarts a couple of songs. He’s charmingly scattered, but it’s plainly down to events at home in Los Angeles. His home is safe during the Friday show, but many aren’t. The fires haunt the night.

Rufus Wainwright performs at Melbourne Recital Centre on Friday.Credit: Richard Clifford

Wainwright came up in the early 2000s and was nominally tied to the indie-pop world, but he always seemed out of time. Tonight, alone on stage with a grand piano and an acoustic guitar, his vibrato-rich voice channels centuries of influences, drawing on opera, folk, show tunes and music hall. Distant pasts repeat.

In a song about Kurt Weill, he wills us into a time “when everyone was miserable, pretty much across the board”. Lord Byron’s poem Darkness, about the devastation of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, becomes a prescient folk song.

His own past is ever-present too. Beauty Mark is about his late mother Kate McGarrigle, and Dinner at Eight is about his father, Loudon Wainwright. It can’t be a fluke that the harmonies of (brilliant) support act Folk Bitch Trio, who join him on stage for a spell, bring a little bit of the McGarrigle sisters’ energy to the room.

He may be stripped of the rich production of his recordings, but Wainwright doesn’t do low-key. He’s built for grand gestures. Like he once said of his frequent muse Judy Garland, you really believe Wainwright means every word he sings. “I was just a girl then / Never have I loved since then,” he pines in The Art Teacher. “Look at you suckers!” he belts in Out of the Game.

Rufus Wainwright has the power to make you believe every word he sings.Credit: Richard Clifford

He closes the night with a couple of suitably grand covers – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and Jean Renoir’s La Complainte de la Butte – but the true heart of the set came in the middle. Wainwright introduces Going to a Town, one of his most compelling songs, with genuine reticence. Written deep in the George W. Bush years, it’s still brimming with evergreen dismay. Folk Bitch Trio accompany him for a sublime four-part harmony, along with piano and two guitars, all reverberating off the Recital Centre’s hoop pine walls.

“I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down,” he sings. “I’m so tired of you, America.” It’s an end-of-empire elegy, painfully real.
Reviewed by Will Cox

MUSIC
Primal Scream ★★★★
Forum Melbourne, January 10

In their 43rd year of existence, Primal Scream, a band relentlessly plugged into the present and in love with the past, have shifted their thoughts to the afterlife. Their new album, Come Ahead, opens with the lyrics, “When my time finally comes, I’ll be ready”. But, for the black T-shirted crowd packing out the first show of their Australian tour, it’s not the future that’s on their minds.

Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream performs at the Forum on Friday night.Credit: Martin Philbey

After a sterling set from local incendiaries Gut Health, Primal Scream – augmented by two backing singers, a keyboardist and a bedazzled multi-instrumentalist – arrive to a rafter-shaking reception. Opening song Swastika Eyes brings the crowd onside immediately before their set shifts between tracks from Come Ahead and bangers like the blues rock raver Jailbird, which sees under-appreciated guitarist and arranger Andrew Innes grin widely as he slashes at his Les Paul as if just discovering rock’n’roll.

The band received a rafters-shaking welcome.Credit: Martin Philbey

Part of the thrill of seeing a band who write in the recording studio is seeing how necessity transforms the songs in concert. New tracks Love Insurrection, Ready to Go Home and Innocent Money are riff-driven, relying on the slippery interplay between drummer Darrin Mooney and bassist Simone Butler. Older songs, especially those from their landmark 1991 album Screamadelica, stand out not just for their familiarity but for their dynamic shifts and genre-mashing arrangements that, 35 years on, still surprise.

“Melbourne,” Gillespie croaks. “Are you ready to get Loaded?” We are. The drum loop begins and the man who described himself as “a cosmonaut of inner space” in his memoir takes us back to the ’90s.

Tonight, he is dressed in snakeskin boots and a slim white suit that opens to reveal a black and hot-pink polyester shirt that simply should not, by any stretch of logic, make a 63-year-old man look hot. If he ever stood still, the gaunt and hipless Gillespie would resemble an ivory hatpin, but he never does. Pacing the stage, imploring, exhorting, with each rousing chorus, he and the band are a joyous collective moving in lockstep. New tracks Circus of Life and Melancholy Man get their first airings and work magnificently. Set closers Movin’ on Up, Country Girl and the crowd-enhanced encores of Come Together and Rocks are euphoric.

As Noel Gallegher said, when Primal Scream won the 2007 NME Godlike Genius award, “Innes is a genius and Bobby still means it.”
Reviewed by Andy Hazel

DANCE
Storytime Ballet: Sleeping Beauty ★★★
The Australian Ballet, Comedy Theatre, until January 12

Now in its 10th year, the Storytime Ballet series continues to provide quality holiday entertainment with intimate, 50-minute versions of classic ballets. This time it’s the spangled charms of Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty in David McAllister’s compact adaptation.

The small ensemble performed very prettily on Thursday, led by Grace Campbell as Princess Aurora and Zoe Horn as the Lilac Fairy. Lucas McLean was the Prince. All three are students at the Australian Ballet School, as are Molly Bell, Eliza Hickey and Madeline Flood.

Storytime Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty in a performance at The Sydney Opera House.Credit: Daniel Boud

The more experienced cast members include Chantelle van der Hoek and Elena Salerno, both part of The Australian Ballet’s education team. Van der Hoek, who I last saw as a selfish stepsister in Cinderella, provided plenty of mischievous fun as the angry fairy Carabosse.

Sean McGrath was once again the narrator, a role he created in 2015. He knows where to find the humour in McAllister’s script and how to fill the gaps between the sparkly solos. Most importantly, he can hold the attention of an audience of rowdy youngsters.

There’s not a lot of slapstick in this production, but what little there is goes a long way. McGrath’s sprawling attempt at a courtly reverence – the deep bow of gratitude performed at the end of a ballet – had kids and adults alike in stitches.

There’s also a fair bit of interactive “look behind you” business, even though this isn’t a pantomime. Like other ballets in the Storytime series, the aim of this show is to introduce children to the conventions of storybook ballet, like the use of mime and when to applaud.

The Sleeping Beauty is the perfect vehicle for such a project because Pepita’s fairytale can have a weird – and somewhat disconcerting – influence on the very young. Wasn’t it his production of The Sleeping Beauty that first captivated an eight-year-old Anna Pavlova, leading to her career in dance?

In any case, this production also aims to expose aspiring ballerinas and ballerinos to some serious dancing, offering clear and direct demonstrations of the values inherent in classical ballet.

It all runs very nimbly and is well-fitted to the Comedy Theatre stage. The sets and costumes, recycled from an older full-length production, are as garishly vibrant as one might expect for a show aimed at children armed with flickering, battery-powered wands.

The excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s lyrical score are performed in the fine recording by Orchestra Victoria, conducted by Nicolette Fraillon.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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