T he Australian musical can seem like a chimera, something fantastical and unlikely; even the rare successes often disappear into obscurity after their initial runs. Let’s hope this isn’t the fate of My Brilliant Career, a musical adaptation of Miles Franklin’s beloved novel that manages to shake its source material like a snow globe without dislodging its power or charm. With a book by Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant, music by Mathew Frank and lyrics by Bryant, it triumphs in a genre that tends to elude us in this country.
One of the central challenges for the creative team is the gap in time and sensibility between Franklin’s world and our own. Waves of feminist thought have washed over us since protagonist Sybylla Melvyn (Kala Gare) turned down a perfectly good offer of marriage in order to write down her thoughts, and the danger is that her struggles could feel trite or irrelevant. A contemporary Sybylla would be an absurdity but then a stringently reverent period piece wouldn’t suit her either.
She bursts off the page and needs to do the same on stage. It becomes clear in the first few minutes that this Sybylla – described variously as fevered, wild, wicked, plain and simply mad – is a force of nature, defiant of her station and determined to carve a future for herself that doesn’t involve drudgery and confinement. Frank and Bryant give her an introductory song straight out of pub rock, directly addressed to the audience, and Gare nails its force and a.
