{"id":15105,"date":"2025-11-02T03:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T16:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/?p=15105"},"modified":"2025-11-02T03:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T16:10:09","slug":"observer-here-you-come-again-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/2025\/11\/02\/observer-here-you-come-again-2\/","title":{"rendered":"OBSERVER: Here You Come Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a joyous celebration of the music of Dolly Parton, the musical Here You Come Again is having an encore Melbourne season.<br>A gay Dolly Parton fan, 40-something Kevin, is struggling with life as a relationship fails and he finds himself back living with his parents in Bendigo.<br>However, a fairy godmother in the form of Dolly appears and, by sharing her own rags-to-riches life story and the hurdles she faced and overcame, helps him face his demons and grab life by the horns.<br>The musical was co-created by two-time Emmy-winner Bruce Vilanch, Gabriel Barre, and Tricia Paoluccio.<br>Thankfully it eschews the narrative arc most commonly associated with many celebrity life stories in favour of something a bit more imaginative.<br>Packed with some of her greatest hits, the singing helps drive the narrative while dialogue between the two leads, occasionally corny and cliched, still contains some humorous homilies on life.<br>Critical to the success of the show is the brilliant performance of Tricia Paoluccio in the role of Dolly.<br>Paoluccio has wonderful energy and flair and almost channels Parton rather than impersonates her. Her beautiful voice is near faultless in capturing the Dolly Parton sound. Dash Kruck gives a sympathetic portrayal of Kevin, capturing his loneliness and insecurity, notwithstanding a tendency to be too manic at times.<br>Directed by Gabriel Barre with Andrew Worboys as musical director, the show is full of glitz and glamour and has a big heart which is very Dolly.<br>A live band of five &#8211; Kellie Rode, Bailey Dunnage, Laura Joy Bunting. Luke Herbert and Worboys himself &#8211; share the stage, creating a quality authentic country and western sound integral to the show (as well as playing some minor characters).<br>To its credit, despite being a touch maudlin at times, Here You Come Again provides a thoroughly entertaining evening that can be appreciated by all, regardless of whether you are a Parton fan or not.<br>Venue: Comedy Theatre, 240 Exhibition St, Melbourne<br>Dates and times: Until November 15<br>Duration: 2 hours and 20 minutes (with a 20 min. interval)<br>Bookings: Ticketek<br><strong>Review by Peter Murphy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Pictured: Samuel Dundas (Figaro) in Opera Australia&#8217;s production of The Barber of Seville. Photo: Jeff Busby<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a joyous celebration of the music of Dolly Parton, the musical Here You Come Again is having an encore Melbourne season.A gay Dolly Parton fan, 40-something Kevin, is struggling with life as a relationship fails and he finds himself back living with his parents in Bendigo.However, a fairy godmother in the form of Dolly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15111,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15105\/revisions\/15111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}