OBSERVER: Breaking The Musical
To the growing list of unlikely heroes of the Olympics, Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel, the Jamaican bobsledders, Steven Bradbury, Australia can add another: our very own underdog queen of breaking, Spraygun, immortalised in creator Stephanie Broadbridge’s rollicking Breaking the Musical.
Sprachael (Broadbridge), a wide-eyed, young(ish) Doctor of Breakdancing, hailing from the mean ghetto streets of Hornsby Shire in Sydney’s upper North Shore, leaves home with a crazy dream to breakdance for Australia at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Our B-postgrad degree-girl Sprachael listens to her Inner Voice, a sparkling, lurex Jake Howie, strutting straight from a RuPaul runway, “You go, girl”
And why not? As her coach/husband, MC Shammy Sex, a whacky Freddie McManus, describes it, “She moves like Steve Buscemi.”
Broadbridge and the ensemble cast milk every laugh from this crazy but true(ish) story.
A panto villain, Artie Gallagher, dressed as a lawyer, invades the stage to boos from the audience.
Anna Dooley’s French mime hilariously performs the journey from Melbourne to Paris.
Narrator Nikki Britton goads the audience to get up and break into moves.
The cast performs a scene from ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ – think giant snake and footballer confessions.
On-point dance routines choreographed by cast member Edan McGovern and a live band round out a polished musical production that almost had its wings clipped due to legal challenges.
These are addressed in the show, as well as issues of cultural appropriation.
Dane Simpson and Isaac Compton point to the irony of copyrighting a dance routine featuring kangaroo moves.
“After all, no one has recreated a kangaroo dance in 60,000 years.”
Clever writing and, at times, side-splitting comic moments make Breaking the Musical an unforgettable show that deserves a much longer run.
Review by Kathryn Keeble