By Nick Dent
Calamity Jane
Bille Brown Theatre
Until April 17
★★★★★
To enhance the rowdy saloon atmosphere of Calamity Jane, 24 extra audience seats have been jammed onto the Bille Brown Theatre stage. It’s just as well: when word gets out, they’re going to need them.
The show has its origins as a movie, a campy 1953 effort starring Doris Day as the gun-slinging tomboy heroine, loosely based on a real-life sharpshooter whose frontier exploits were so hotly disputed, she may as well have been a fictional character.
I just got back from the Windy City … Naomi Price in the title role of Calamity Jane.Credit: Morgan Roberts
A postwar narrative about women giving up their roles as workers and re-embracing traditional marriage, the film’s use of drag and sexual role playing made it an accidental queer classic.
The Broadway musical followed in 1961, but languished in comparison to Oklahoma and Annie Get Your Gun, despite having songs of a calibre that many of today’s musicals would trade their spurs for.
So when director Richard Carroll dusted it off for a staged reading at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre in 2016, no one expected it to become the indie smash of the pre-COVID era, playing sold-out main-stage seasons in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and beyond.
Laura Bunting (Katie) and Naomi Price (Calamity) perform among audience members seated on stage. Credit: Morgan Roberts
And now we at last have Carroll and his original creative team helming a Brisbane production for Queensland Theatre, with a local cast led by cabaret queen Naomi Price. Worth the wait? Darn tootin’. Deliriously funny, impeccably staged, it’s the Calamity we all needed after the near-calamity of Alfred (which nearly derailed the show’s rehearsals).
It purports to be about the Wild West, but it’s really about showbiz. The setting is a theatre saloon, the Golden Garter, in the backwater town of Deadwood, where proprietor Henry Miller (Andrew Buchanan) needs glamorous female entertainers to satisfy his cowboy clientele.
Calamity (Price) is a gal of action who has no use for women’s attire, but may just learn that wearing a dress and playing the role of a lady can amplify one’s powers and perspective.
When an actor brought in from out of town turns out to be a Francis rather than a Frances (Darcy Brown), Calamity is dispatched on a mission to bring a Chicago stage star, Adelaide Adams (Juliette Coates), to Deadwood. Hijinks ensue.
The full cast of Queensland Theatre’s Calamity Jane performs the anthemic Black Hills of Dakota.Credit: Morgan Roberts
Brown, a lanky Matilda Award winner, plays the fish out of water to perfection, while Coates hides her bona fides under a bushel of comedic versatility before revealing what a stunning singer she is.
Calamity lusts after Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin (Sean Sinclair) and swaps barbs with Wild Bill Hickok who, as played by Anthony Gooley, is funnier as a whiskey-soaked prairie dog than the beige dreamboat Howard Keel played in the movie.
In her rendition of Keep It Under Your Hat, Laura Bunting, as aspiring singer Katie Brown, morphs from stage fright to slinky confidence as her character finds her stride.
The cast of eight is rounded out by musical director Nigel Ubrihien playing an upright piano. But as in another film-based musical, Once, which Carroll has also directed, the actors get to join in on various instruments.
Audience members on stage, too, are roped into the shenanigans. You’ve been warned.
There are topical jokes about cyclones and stadiums, and plenty of ad libbing by the charismatic Price. Anyone familiar with her work will not be surprised that she is simply amazing in this, a mistress of mayhem who has the audience eating out of her hand like a broken-in filly.
And what songs! I Just Blew in from the Windy City; Secret Love; The Black Hills of Dakota – classics by Paul Francis Webster (lyrics) and Sammy Fain (music) from an era that had musical theatre talent to burn.
If you think the fun is over after the final bows, think again: the cast files out to the piano in the foyer to serenade the crowd with a medley of popular hits. What snake oil have they been imbibing to get their energy? Beg, borrow, hold up a stagecoach, rob a Wells Fargo – but make sure you get a ticket.
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