BRIGHT STAR
BRIGHT STAR, Sport for Jove and Hayes Theatre Co, at Hayes Theatre, 5 September-5 October 2025. Photography by Robert Catto
A joyous experience awaits you at the Hayes Theatre if you have tickets to Bright Star. And if you don’t: what are you waiting for! The show, with music, book, and story by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, arrives in Sydney with the tag “Tony nominated”, which means it didn’t win. However, it had the misfortune to premiere in 2016 – with Hamilton – need more be said?
Actually, yes: where Hamilton is glittering diamond-hard rap dazzle and super-bright originality, Bright Star is all heart, humanity, and glorious new-grass/bluegrass music. Piquantly, both are based on true stories, one being the founding of the USA (as we used to know it) while Bright Star is the story of Alice Murphy (Hannah McInerney), literary editor of the Asheville Southern Journal and her connection with Billy Cane (Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward), a young man just returned from WWII whose ambition is to enter the pantheon of Great Southern Writers.
In flashback to Alice’s small town youth and youthful first love, Jimmy Ray (Kaya Byrne), most will work out quite quickly what that connection is, but no matter. It’s the getting there, and the drama, music, wit, and pathos in between that make two-and-some hours (including interval) of entertainment that’s rich as cherry pie.* Central to this production is the cast of 16 all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting, and all-playing performers. The stage is alive with music and musicians throughout, and they’re just as fine as frog’s hair.*
As well as singing solo, choral, trios, and mastering that unmistakable keening close harmony of the Appalachian roots, each member of the cast doubles and sometimes trebles in playing not only the traditional bluegrass instruments of violin, mandolin, banjo, guitar, and bass, but also cello, percussion, autoharp, harmonica, spoons, and keyboards/piano. The results, in serving and augmenting the songs, are just dandy.* (Musical Director: Alec Steedman, and leading from the keyboards: Victoria Falconer.)
The humans are assisted in their endeavours by an ingeniously devised setting of raised, timber-floored platform around which are arranged various props and furnishings that are choreographed off and on and into place by the cast. There’s a door, a few wooden benches, orange boxes, and an upright piano on casters that, with a great big lamp attached, becomes a steam engine with passengers jiggling and bumping along behind. At another point, the world’s most versatile suitcases also become the train when not doing other things. (Set designer: Isabel Hudson. Lighting: James Wallis.)
Also crucial to the show’s success are sound designer Jarrad Payne and sound engineer Em-Jay Dwyer. The Hayes auditorium is not large, and with 16 performers and multiple musical instruments in constant play, it would be too easy to either blast the audience to kingdom come or have the lyrics and music dissolve into unintelligible mush. As it is, between them, the sound wizards achieve a triumph of clarity and warmth – all the more important when we really need to hear the lyrics and savour the music’s complex rhythms and harmonies.
The pivotal central performance from Hannah McInerney is another triumph: her days as a swing or cover should now be over. She dazzles and grabs the heartstrings on her own, and interacting with wondrous Kaya Byrne, or her mum, Katrina Retallick, channelling 1940s womanhood, or her obnoxiously devout paterfamilias, Rupert Reid. There’s not a weak link in the company, including Genevieve Goldman’s hilarious bluestocking Margo, and Deirdre Khoo’s Lucy – another eye-catcher. Shannon Burns’ choreography has the 16 moving with deceptively carefree precision, while costume designer Lily Mateljan has cornered the market in inter-war-Depression era clobber. The whole is directed with finesse and glorious attention to humans and to detail by Miranda Middleton and Damien Ryan, and, all in all, you’ll be madder than a wet hen if you miss it.*
*From Brer Rabbit's Book of Southern Sayings, 12th edition.
