MY BRILLIANT CAREER

By Diana Simmonds

March 26 2026

MY BRILLIANT CAREER, Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, 21 March-3 May 2026. Photography by Pia Johnson

At last! The great Australian musical! (For irate fans: Phar Lap is the great Australian horse musical; The Venetian Twins is the great hilarious Australian musical.) Nevertheless, the golden team of Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant – book, Mathew Frank – music, Bryant – lyrics, and Anne-Louise Sarks – director, has birthed the musical theatre dream, and it’s a girl!

She’s based on the much-loved novel from 1901, My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, and in casting Kala Gare as ambitious proto-feminist Sybilla Melvyn from Possum Gully, the pivotal piece of the puzzle is locked in place. Gare is an unstoppable, self-aware, comical, heart-wrenching force of nature, and she doesn’t stop, nor shut up, for the two hours (plus 20-minute interval) of the show’s running time.

It’s not a solo show, however, although Sybilla is necessarily front and centre. The company is a dazzling mob of all-singing, all-dancing, all-playing performers whose confidence and ease in their roles, along with piano, keyboards, cello, double bass, electric bass, violin, drums, percussion, mandolin, and guitars, is a wondrous delight. Musical director Victoria Falconer is among the ensemble, Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward is the Pommy snot Frank, as well as carting around a cello and playing it on the fly.

On acoustic guitar, Raj Labade is smouldering hero Harry and sings like a fallen angel; Drew Livingston morphs between Mr Melvyn, Jay-Jay and M’Swat, as well as assisting Falconer. Lincoln Elliott is thwarted Jimmy and sulky brat Horace when not bass playing; Christina O’Neill is a heart-string plucker as Sybilla’s long suffering mum, and a couple of other women, Ana Mitsikas rules the upright piano as stern Grannie, and Rose Jane; Melanie Bird is spunky younger sister Gertie, and pert miss, Blanche, while Jarrad Payne anchors from a drum kit that wasn’t around in the 1890s.

That’s one of the many clever things about this production. Designer Marg Horwell – now Olivier- and Tony-winning, and congratulations to her – has placed the dangerously close to chaotic, all-action requirements of the text on a single, clarifying set. The capacious Ros stage is covered in droughty rural Australia’s golden dry grass. A central circular dais is home to a ratty white upright piano and a couple of stools. Chandeliers drop and signify Grannie’s upmarket abode, the back wall glows in signifying hues and symbols from time to time, and otherwise, focus is on the tongue-in-cheek costumes that start as dress-up box ideas of 1899 and gradually streamline to almost contemporary duds.

Lighting Designer Matt Scott achieves sharp and magical visual atmospheres – feel the heat, feel the dry, smell the dust. At the same time, sound designer Joy Weng performs miracles with the notoriously difficult acoustics of the Ros: the performers are mic-ed, the instruments are mic-ed and mainly on the move, and the clarity of seemingly natural sound is remarkable. The other crucial element of the creative team is choreographer Amy Campbell. There’s not a “Fosse Fosse Fosse – Twyla Tharp Twyla Tharp…” to be seen; instead, the musical mix of folk, rock and show ballad is reflected in movement that’s subtle and witty. Tiny details flash by, and the company is at once exuberant and disciplined.

Okay, it’s daft to say Miles Franklin would love what Harbridge and Co have done with her book, but the temptation is irresistible. They have taken the deceptively simple story of the girl who could not bear to be tied down to marriage, and yearned for freedom and a writer’s life and foregrounded its politics. They’ve honoured Franklin while turning the book upside down to present it musically and dramatically 120+ years on. Even the most stubborn purist must surely succumb to the magic.

The final evidence of sorcery at work is that the rambunctious mood of the piece doesn’t destroy its humanity: Sheridan Harbridge's voice is clearly heard, and tissues may occasionally be required. All in all, it’s easy to see why Melbourne was in 5-star thrall to this show and, if Sydney’s deliriously happy first night audience was anything to go by, the same has to happen here. It’s brilliant: do it.