Georgy Girl: the Seekers musical review: Good singing can't save bad writing

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This was published 7 years ago

Georgy Girl: the Seekers musical review: Good singing can't save bad writing

By Bernard Zuel
Updated

GEORGY GIRL: THE SEEKERS MUSICAL
State Theatre, April 6. Until June 5

No one intended Georgy Girl to be such a poor musical. It's likely that many, not least the leads whose singing is the saving grace of an evening that feels interminable and yet without trace, have tried very hard to save it from itself.

Mike McLeish, Phillip Lowe, Pippa Grandison and Glaston Toft in <i>Georgy Girl: The Seekers Musical.</i>

Mike McLeish, Phillip Lowe, Pippa Grandison and Glaston Toft in Georgy Girl: The Seekers Musical.Credit: Jeff Busby

Good intentions, after all, is the core of the appeal of the Seekers, a folk pop quartet who aspired to be an Antipodean, if apolitical, folk group in the mould of the Weavers or Peter, Paul and Mary. They rode on the songwriting coat-tails of the English version of those same aspirations, the Springfields, in the same year the Beatles toured Australia.

Although suggested otherwise by the show's overplayed "psychedelic" outfits and "groovy" dancing (curiously, both more 1967-'68 than 1964) bouncing around our heroes on their arrival in London, in their clean suits and neat hair, their narrow ties and broad smiles, the men of the Seekers did not look that much different to the first wave of Beatles-inspired pop groups.

They were, though, different enough to be a safe haven, a nicer, acoustic and mid-tempo place than the suggestion of knee tremblers in the back of a Humber those rougher boys hinted at.

As such they were the perfect chaps to stand beside the sweetly smiling gentleness of Judith Durham, whose deceptively strong voice hinted at jazz phrasing without pushing into dangerous ventures or inappropriate thoughts. No fuss, no trouble, no drama.

Unfortunately, it is that absence of drama that is the first stumbling block for Georgy Girl.

With success coming quickly, amiable relationships within the group and no flouncing behaviour or embarrassments, writer Patrick Edgeworth resorts to creating a body image issue for Durham (Pippa Grandison) that never feels serious enough to cause more than fashion anxiety, a family dynamic that fails to resonate beyond a seemingly perpetually pregnant sister (Sophie Carter) and a splash of hero worshipping of the genuinely troubled Dusty Springfield (Michelle Smitheram) that goes nowhere.

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If Durham is lightly painted, the "boys" are sketched out in the manner of modern boy bands, and remain that shallow for two hours. Athol Guy (Glaston Toft) is the equable and caring one; Bruce Woodley (Mike McLeish) is the sweet if slightly hapless one with songwriting aspirations; and Keith Potger (Phillip Lowe) is the perpetually randy one.

Worse, though, is a script so laden down with exposition as to buckle over, and jokes which fall leadenly when fun most clearly is wanted.

Most of the narrative is carried by the character of Ron Edgeworth (Durham's eventual husband and brother of Patrick) as a smirking narrator/MC delivering Midday Show-level banter. However, almost everyone must deliver lines such as, "But we're in Carnaby Street, the fashion capital of the world".

If Gary Young's direction seems to have two gears, setting up the next static (but elegantly harmonised) performance or shouting "this is fun, see?", Shaun Gurton's set design favours practicality and economy over romance.

Framed by what may well be second-hand office partitions whose main purpose seems to be easy entry and exit points, it is a set as underdeveloped but overworked as the book and the show itself.

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