Mickey Jo (0:00)

You say, how's the weather? I say, it could have been a little better. Oh, my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. Or should I say g' day. I shouldn't. I really shouldn't. Oh my God. G' day. Missed opportunity, really. Oh. If I can get through this entire review without doing a dodgy Australian accent again, it's going to be a miracle. The reason that I am talking like this and dressed like this, it's incredibly warm right now. I have several regrets is the fact that I recently went to go and see the stage musical adaptation of the 1990s 1994 Australian comedy film and cult classic Muriel's Wedding. It is currently playing at the Curve Theatre in Leicester as part of its UK premiere. The show was brought to the stage as a musical for the first time around a decade ago. I believe in Australia, but it's finally made its way to the uk. The key question then being twofold. One, how well does the film translate to the stage as a musical? And two, how well does that musical transfer from Australia to the uk? Because we have very different sensibilities, very different sort of tones and very different audiences. In any case, today I will be reviewing the musical production of Muriel's Wedding and letting you know exactly what I thought of every facet of this production. If you have had the chance to see it already, either here in the UK or previously in Australia, I would love to hear from you in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy what I have to say and you would like to hear more of my reviews, then make sure you're subscribed on YouTube with the notifications turned on or following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's jump right in. Did I introduce myself at the start? If I said my name at any point. Hi. Oh my God. G' day. I'm Mickey Jo. I'm a theatre critic here on social media. This is Muriel's Wedding. So Muriel's Wedding, 1994 Australian comedy film with a feminist statement. It's also. It's kind of. It's the most depressing comedy that you're ever going to see on screen. Really. It's very layered and it's very sort of offbeat and I find this in general about a. Of great classic Australian cinema. I'm thinking about Strictly Ballroom here. I'm thinking about Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. There is often this slightly subversive quality that we're seeing more and more of actually in like cross genre contemporary comedy films in the us. I think, if anything, Australia may have been just wildly ahead of the game tonally. But Muriel's Wedding, like some of those that I mentioned, lands somewhere between quirky, campy and objectively dark. And for a discernibly insincere story about a young woman who is obsessed with ABBA and goes around trying on wedding dresses because she's lying about the fact that she's getting married, when in reality that's not happening whatsoever. For something that seems like it ought to be silly. It deals with a lot of very heavy and serious themes and plot points and opens up a conversation about negative mental health and self image. And I do think, in general, when I went to see Strictly Ballroom touring around the uk, I thought the comedy of it specifically is not something that the production here had seemed to be able to quite get right. And I think there is something of a gulf between the Australian sense of humor and the British sense of humour. I think it's that subversive sort of semi ironic quality that we can't quite grasp. And I noticed that in this production as well. But for those of you who have no idea what Muriel's Wedding is beyond the very short synopsis that I just gave, let me expand a little bit here. So we meet our title character, Muriel Heslop, who lives in the small town of Pauper Spit. I've done it. I've gone back to Australia and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop. And she is one of four children, none of whom have yet to really amount to anything. Her family is disappointed in her and her friends don't particularly, particularly enjoy her company. They're a group of narcissistic and vapid mean girls who haven't really changed since high school. At the beginning, one of them is getting married. She has no idea that one of her bridesmaids is also having an affair with the groom right there at the wedding reception. But when Muriel catches the bouquet, implying that she is going to be the next bride, of course, as per nuptial tradition, they are outraged that she would do something so selfish, igniting this desire in Muriel to get married and prove them all wrong and prove that she is worth something. Because unfortunately for her, she believes what she is told by her parents, by her very pushy father who is in local politics, by her siblings, by her fake friends. She believes that she is a nobody and that she's fat and all of these negative adjectives that she attaches to herself. And she believes that if someone were to choose her romantically, and if she were to get married to this ideal, tall, handsome husband, that finally it would prove that she was somebody. And the film sees her stealing money from her family, running away to Sydney, living with her friend Rhonda, who is this free spirit who doesn't care what anyone else thinks. Only it takes us an awful lot of time and several dodgy decisions in order to get there. There's a huge amount of exposition in Muriel's Wedding, the musical, which has been inherited from Muriel's Wedding, the film. And if the story that we're waiting for is Muriel going into these bridal shops and trying on all of these dresses, because this is the life that she wants for herself and fantasizing about the possibility of it, it takes us an awfully long time to get there. Along the way, dumped by her friends, she follows them onto a cruise ship. That's where she reunites with Rhonda for the first time since high school, and the two of them become friends. She also, largely through ignorance, contributes to the sadness of her mother's life, who is something of a pushover who just lives for everyone else in her family and never really gets the respect that she deserves. Oh, and here's another detail. I can't believe I left this out so far. Muriel is also obsessed with the Songs of Abba, which is framed as slightly silly, but honestly, aren't we all? You just know she'd have loved Mamma Mia. And in the end parts of the film, it's the music of ABBA that gives her this sense of buoyancy and positivity and joy in an otherwise objectively miserable and unfulfilled life. But the key thing about Muriel is she doesn't really bear the full weight of that realization, because there is a very charming. I mean, call it naivety, call it foolishness to her. She is aware of her own misery, but she is also incredibly adept at sort of deluding herself, which leads to pathological lying. Yes, Muriel, like the Evan Hansen of the early 90s, lies to just about everyone. She lies to her friend Rhonda about her life thus far. She lies to her parents. She lies on a huge scale when she agrees to participate in a sham marriage. This is detail going way into the second act of the show, but it makes for, objectively, a very challenging character to bring to the stage. And I think there's something about seeing something in front of you as a stage production, as a musical, rather than on screen, where likability becomes even more important. And we have to feel as though we can relate in some way to this protagonist. And it's not like Muriel doesn't have reasons for doing the wild things that she does. But it's also a mindset, a character in a set of circumstances that can feel, I think, a little bit unrelatable. Now, I saw the film for the first time a few months ago. There are, from what I could tell, a handful of small changes. One in particular is the enlargement of the character of Bryce Nobes as a potential love interest for Muriel. He works as a parking inspector and he's in the film, but I can't bring myself to remember anything that he does. I'm sure he has a larger role in the musical because he has this instant attraction to her. He feels a little pathetic in and of himself, and he is miserable in his job because people just scream at him all day for giving them parking tickets. But even though there is an easy initial chemistry between the two of them, between Bryce and Muriel, she doesn't necessarily view him straight away as a potential romantic interest, but just as confirmation that someone could be attracted to her, that it is possible, and that therefore she will be able to find the explicitly tall and handsome man of her dreamy specifications. Otherwise, the whole thing feels largely similar to the film. And there's a good reason for that, because the book of this musical has been written by P.J. hogan, who also wrote and directed the 1994 film. The production at Curve has been directed by the show's original director, Simon Phillips, who also directed the legendary Australian stage musical adaptation of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And the music and lyrics, meanwhile, are by Kate Miller, Heidke and Nuttall, along with several ABBA songs, which is a very difficult thing to stand up to, but they do a pretty great job, even alongside the brilliant music of Benny and Bjorn. There are a fair few songs in Muriel's Wedding which I would articulately describe as utter bops, like really, really fun stuff, like you say, how's the weather? I say, never been better. I will have that in my head for weeks after listening to it. Also, there's a great song when they go to Sydney. When you get to Sydney, you can be anything you want to be. That's a great song. Song. I would say in general that the uptempo songs with the pop vibes that are a little bit Eurovisiony, actually, now that I think about it, just a little bit campy pop. They play a little more memorably than some of the ballads, but I like some of the slower songs as well. The lyrics are fun and witty and characterful throughout. And I think the best song is actually one which the mean local girls of Pauper Spit sing to Muriel when they let her know that they no longer want to spend time with her. But I'm going to let you know about that in this next section when I tell you about some of my favorite creative aspects from the show. So it's a lovely production from Simon Phillips that feels both true to the original film and also newly vibrant for the world of musical theatre. When you have some of the original writers still working on an adaptation, you worry about it not moving far enough away from what it was. But I think, you know, just broadly speaking, the moments that they've chosen to musicalize and where they've chosen to add songs and the relationships they've chosen to focus on are the right choices. If Muriel's wedding has a couple of issues, I don't think those are it. I will say that the whole thing is a little long, but I'm getting ahead of myself and I'm talking about some of the shortcomings. Let's first talk about what I really enjoyed. It is vibrant. It is bright and colorful and campy. And there are several moments that we get to that are astonishingly great. All of the ABBA stuff plays really, really well with a British audience. It's a while before we see ABBA for the first time. I almost wonder if there's a version of this show in. We meet ABBA earlier and they're bizarrely the narrators of the whole thing. It seems crazy, but, you know, crazy kind of works for Muriel's wedding. By the time that we eventually meet them, it's really winning. And the way that they are staged and the way that you have, at one point, this wardrobe that opens and one member of ABBA is inside, the doors close, it opens, then there's two inside, and then we repeat. And more and more members of ABBA appear. Once we get to there, the audience is on board and they love all of that stuff and they go absolutely nuts for it. There are a couple of other moments that are just as brilliant. On the cruise ship, after Rhonda reveals to one of Muriel's former friends that the bridesmaid was having an affair with the new groom, and they launch into this cat fight running across the stage. Rhonda and Muriel are simultaneously performing in a talent show dressed as Frida and Agnetta, singing an ABBA song. I think they're singing Waterloo from the Film and the two girls are screaming at each other and chasing each other across the stage in front of this performance and to injure each other with a pool noodle. And it's at that point that we have ascended to absolute greatness. Like, this is fantastic. And if we could maintain that energy, then the whole thing would be brilliant throughout. I'll talk a little bit more about why it took us so long to get there. Now, I alluded to my favorite song before. It's called Can't Hang. It happens in the first half of the first act. And it's this girl group style vocal between Muriel's mean former friends. And they're singing. Sorry, don't take it personal, Muriel. The combination of the catchiness of the song, it scratches exactly the same gay itch in my brain that a whole lot of Locomotion, the old song in Starlight Express, used to. But the combination of the way that it's written and that kind of early 2000s pop style with the way that it's staged and the choreography and the way that they are in sync and in canon and the one of them just doing little, like, vocalization punctuations at the end of each sentence like. Like, it's so funny, but it's done so sincerely. They commit to the ridiculousness with utter seriousness and sincerity. And that's when the show really works. The opening number gives us the same level of ridiculousness when we see all of these, like, stereotypical Australian surfer dudes in swimwear and all of the girls next to them and they're holding surfboards and they're singing about the sunshine. The song is called Sunshine State of Mind, which is a lyric that we. We hear. And a lot of the show's best scenes and most winning moments are similarly silly. When Muriel goes into the bridal boutique on the occasion that they discover that she's not actually getting married. Their extraordinary reaction to this as they remove the dress from her and insist that it's taken away because a single woman is the worst thing that could possibly be in the store. And she's regarded as this lower class citizen. It's so wonderfully stupid. As is the other song that I told you about when we first arrive in Sydney. Critically, this is a very different view of Australia, Australia than the Sunshine State of mind opening. Because you have all of these different types of people. It trends, I think, in the costuming a little too much towards like, gothy queer club kids. I've not been to Australia. I don't know if that's the prevailing aesthetic. But I feel like, you know, we've shot for variety and diversity and individualism. And there's just like, a few too many characters who all look sort of similar like that. Most of them are going to one party and there's a couple of people in and amongst who have a very different vibe. When I. I think, based on the lyric, the idea that they're going for is that you can be anyone you want to be in Sydney. And you have all of these different outrageous characters. And all of. I mean, the lyrics are hilarious. Everything that they admit to having done all of these terrible things is followed after each confession with the lyric, well, nobody's perfect. Until we meet Bryce for the first time before learning his name, when he says, I'm a parking inspector, and they just spit at him. It's so good. And again, deeply relatable to British people. Abba and hating parking restrictions. Those are the two moods of the nation, I feel. Now, Sydney, I will say, is the fourth song from the end of the first act, and it feels like a really perfect Act 2 opening, except for the fact that you haven't done any of the bridal stuff. Any of her trying on the wedding dresses. Like, a huge amount of character development before we get to Sidney. So there's too much story that has to come afterwards. So I get why it can't be the opening of the second act. I think, in general, the show is probably a little longer than it needs to be. But there's a lot of story in Muriel's wedding and they don't seem to have wanted to drastically cut much. Matt Kinley is the set designer for this production. We have various FL flats with sort of circular cutouts. There's a bit of a circular motif. The whole thing takes place on a turntable, which surprised me a little bit, because otherwise I think this would be a great show to tour around the uk, and a turntable on the set is going to make that challenging. But the circular thing, I thought initially it was a reference to, like, vinyl records because Muriel loves music, or CDs, I guess, because the film was set in the 90s, even though the musical isn't. More on that in just a moment. But I subsequently realized it's the idea of a ring. It's engagement rings, and that's what she's seeing spinning around in her eyes the entire time. It's Muriel's wedding, after all. And I was very slow on the uptake there, but it's a great design feature elsewhere. It's a Fun and kooky set design. It looks like a lot of other contemporary musicals that we're seeing right now. We have some uses of digital screens. We have an awful lot of doors. The idea of a door seems to be invoked many times. And I like the way that at one point we have ensemble members as mannequins in the bridal shop. That's very fun. That's a fun touch. Which brings us nicely to costuming. Gabriela Talsova has designed not only brilliant costumes for each of these characters. I mean, Muriel's aesthetic is so Muriel. And Rhonda is so herself and Muriel's family. And like her sister, who just wears these baggy T shirts and the outfits that her friends are wearing that are sort of coordinated and a little strange in and of themselves. Also all of these gorgeous wedding dresses, all of the outfits that I mentioned when we go to Sydney. And one of my favorite design features, because I love uses of color like this. At the top of the second act, Bryce, who, I'll remind you, is our down on his luck love interest, parking inspector. He sings a song about a message that his father had left to him about never sticking your neck out. That's the name of the song. And everyone that we see passing around him is in this sort of bright neon fluorescent yellow matching the vest that he's wearing as a parking inspector. And that's just a fun and whimsical use of colors. We see. See the. The day to day around him coming to life musically. That's very much what I like a musical to be. And so an awful lot to enjoy about Muriel's wedding. I will talk about the brilliant performances as well, but before I do, like I said, there are a couple shortcomings that we should discuss. Now. I actually think that there is a great show here. And it's not terrible, Muriel, but it's also not yet. Yet effing amazing. These are all references to the show. If you think I've lost the plot. I think one of the key problems is the way that we begin. I love the opening number. I love the way that it establishes Porpoise Spit. I think we could do a little more to qualify what this is as a small town. Because I think the British concept of Australia is just very sunny and idyllic. And we don't necessarily know when they all come out with the surfboards and everything that that's not Sydney, because that's just what I mean. Personally, I think that's what a lot of people just assume Australia to be. Like, and it's important that we understand that Pauper Spit is this small town and it should feel more claustrophobic and a little backwards than somewhere like the metropolis of Sydney. We should feel that sense of expansion. And other than the shift in the costuming, I don't know that we necessarily do in general. Over the first few scenes, we struggle to really build up comedic momentum. There are too many moments where I don't know if they're expecting us to laugh at a visual joke or Muriel being ushered into her home after the wedding that she was attending at the beginning, with police and her family reacting and everyone waiting for the last, you're terrible, Muriel. But too many moments of silence like that where jokes didn't really seem to be landing either visually or however else. And I genuinely started to think both because of that and because the whole thing is too long. Like it's longer than it needs to be. If they unironically played the whole thing in like 1.25 speed or 1.5 times speed, which I know is how some of you like to enjoy my YouTube content, I think it would actually be a whole lot funnier. Yes, it's weird and subversive and ironic, but I just think that prolonged silences like that are not a good friend to comedy. Said it before, I'll say it again. The other problem is Muriel. I hate to say it, but I mean, she's got some problems. We know this much, but Muriel as a character. Toni Collette's performance was so specific. Who knows if this would have been successful on film with any other actress? Because she really is this once in a generation talent who is so unique and brings this earnest quality to a character who makes really dreadful choices. And she's very charmingly portrayed in this production, but I think there is a little feature of her material that doesn't quite work for me because Muriel sings an awful lot of ballads. And as she reaches, you know, more emotional low points throughout the show, like, it does get a lot worse before it gets better and then it kind of gets worse again. And so at that point it makes sense for her to sing a depressing ballad, but to get an I want song so early out of the gate as a ballad for Muriel, when she's not at that point, you know, particularly self aware or sincere, she's singing about the idea of like, oh, they'll like me if I get married, then everyone will see that I'm, I'm really, really something and I'm somebody. And she's not thought it all of the way through, and she's not doing any of it for the right reasons. And I think for her to sing a song that musically sounds sincere and has little indication to us as the audience that something is awry is. It's a little bit incorrect. And it could be a very similar version of that song. I just wonder if it needs to be in a slightly quirkier, campier, more uptempo arrangement. Honestly, I'm just trying to make this show faster at every turn. But I think Muriel is such an interesting character. Her I Want song. What is that? What is it that she actually wants? Because it's not the wedding, it's the thing that she thinks the wedding will get her. The idea of Muriel wanting to get married is in order to achieve social status, and she only really cares about her family and her friends in Pauper Spit. She's not thinking about the scale that she will go on to find subsequently. But that's the key thing with Muriel. She doesn't think these things through. I wonder if a song about the lies that she tells would be more revealing about her character at this point, this point. Or if the lyrics should be more focused on just, like, wanting people to like her. Because if we could really feel sad for Muriel, like, if she can just, like, look horribly bullied by her friends in a way that is comical, but also legitimately sad at the same time, then that will give her a lot more ammunition to do dreadful things before she loses us emotionally. Like, if we've seen her family and everyone treat her terribly, then we'll be more on side with. With her. And I will move on, I promise. But I think it's this I Want song. I think that's the crux of her character issues here. And I keep going back to Amelie as a musical. Now, when Amelie was on Broadway, Amelie Poulain, as a character very early in the show, sang a song called Times Are Hard for Dreamers. It's a great song. You might know it. But by the time that the show had made its way to the UK in a heavily, extensively reworked production, they had smartly realized that Amelie is not a character who knows what she wants or who is brave enough to. To even musically to herself, articulate what she wants. At that point in her story. She is shy and she's still figuring it out. And she's certainly not going to stand there and sing a declarative I Want song. I think Muriel might be a little like that as well with Times Are Hard For Dreamers. They ended up putting it in the second act later on in the show, really kind of just to use the song. But by the time that she had some momentum for Muriel, that might be by the time that she is on the way to Sydney and finally, finally making choices for herself. And there's a couple of other little oddities about the show as well. Muriel's mother sings similarly a ballad in the first act. And then there's a moment in the second act where we're really expecting a ballad from her and she doesn't sing a ballad there. Huge spoiler alert for what happens with this character. Skip ahead if you don't want to know about this, because I feel like I'm nearly done with this section anyway. But she, essentially miserable and feeling as though everyone would be happy without her, actually dies by suicide in the show's second act, having been completely neglected by her husband and her. And she sees the vision of ABBA that Muriel has been seeing up to this point. And, you know, it's not that it doesn't work, but I was never really expecting to see suicide by ABBA on the theatrical stage. Like, it just simply wasn't on my bingo card. And it's an earnest moment, as is Muriel's obviously musical eulogy that she performs at the funeral, which is a great turning point for her. A better turning point, I think, than Muriel has in the film. The ending feels a little more weighty for that. And I think it's an emotionally impactful ending for her mother. I wonder if the presence ABBA confuses it a little bit. Just because they've been such a tool for zany comedy up to this point. And because, again, they bring joy to Muriel. It's hard for us to identify them when we're seeing fun ABBA on stage, when we like the songs and when Muriel's smiling so big and dancing along with them, and when they're giving her, like, trying to give her good advice as her conscience throughout and being like, oh, my gosh, this happened. What are you going to do? Muriel, like, you must be feeling very sad about that. Like, it's hard for us to then associate those. Them with negative self image and poor mental health. Which is really what Muriel is saying, because when she is in Sydney feeling good about herself, she says, I haven't had to listen to an ABBA song in months because now my life is better than an ABBA song. And I think she says to them at the end something like, I won't be needing you, or like seeing you anymore. And they're the vision that her mother sees when she's at her emotional lowest. So it's difficult to reconcile all of that. I also mentioned to you that the show is now taking place in the modern day. It has been brought up to date and, you know, not that there are that many any cultural differences between the mid-1990s and now. But I think, I don't know, I think it finds a little more charm being of its era. I think you have to do less to address. I don't even know if it's problematic topics, but certainly it's a little outrageous and it's, it's a little bizarre in places. But what I think is slightly more wounding is the idea of Muriel becoming a social media influencer as a result of her arranged marriage in the second act to the Russian Olympic swimmer Alexander. And since she's always been chasing validation and status and approval and friendship externally, it makes sense that that is something that Muriel would gravitate towards and fall in love with. And this is why I think maybe it's easier to set it in the 1990s when social media wasn't a thing. Because realistically, if Muriel's wedding was taking place in 2025, her friends aren't going to meet up with her for cocktails to tell her they don't want to hang out anymore. She's just going to get kicked out of a WhatsApp group with no explanation and she's going to get ghosted. There are so many facets of this story that I think would play a little differently if it was taking place in the social media age. And that's really the one moment where social media intrudes on the story and we don't really notice it in the material. We only really see it in projections on the set. Also, I can't believe how much of this review I've made it through before acknowledging the fact that she changes her name from Muriel to Marial. How is that not a song? How have you not written a Muriel Marielle song? In any case, I do think the whole thing could afford to be a little bit weirder, a little wackier. But I thoroughly enjoyed the performances. Let's finish by talking about the brilliant company. So Megan Ellis stars as Muriel Heslop. Critically, she is deeply charming. She does a lovely job with this material. I think she leans enough into the naivety and I actually think, you know, it's a really heartbreaking performance because you feel the sadness a little more acutely. She feels that little bit more self aware than perhaps Toni Collette did. And you know, there's such a gleeful quality. Even as deranged as Muriel is, as terrible as a lot of her choices are, when she finds herself in a situation when she is joyful and she is smiling, it just radiates the most ridiculous sunny positivity and joy that we can't have help but smile with her. When she's introduced to Alexander and she's basking in how gorgeous he is, and when she's finally getting married and getting everything that she always thought that she wanted, she's happy about it. I wonder if there is the capacity for her to learn just a little bit more. Like she has realizations in the show and she eventually sets herself off on the right path. But I think weirdly, she needs to be probably a little more ignorant of everything at the beginning and then a little wiser by the end. I don't know that it's particularly necessary in a film, but we like to feel that sense of an arc, especially in musical theater. Now the hilarious Annabelle Marlowe, I think is perfectly cast as her friend Rhonda. I have seen Annabelle be so side splittingly funny in ridiculous ways on stage before. Not even with dialogue. Between the dialogue with her physicality, with her expressions, with her completely unique comedic point of view, she is such an individual, which is why she's perfect for this role. And I feel anything she might actually have been a little constrained by it. I would like for her to have had a little more freedom in interpreting it in a slightly wackier way. But I did really like the bond that was there between the two of them, which is kind of the prevailing idea of the musical, of their friendship being the most important thing to each of them. And that has to have been one of the most impactful emotional moments in the first act when they first come together and they, they sing a song to each other about liking each other's style and individuality and how they think each other is effing amazing. Ethan Pascal Peters, meanwhile, is so endearing, charm personified as Bryce Nobs. He's perfectly cast in this role. You root for him at every single turn. The audience vocally responded when he was asking himself aloud, should he text her? Should he pursue this? Everyone so deeply felt for him. And it kind of exposed that, you know, I don't know if we were as involved, invested in Muriel's choices as we were in Bryce's. I don't know that it's necessarily to the benefit of the show to build him up as much as they have as a character. But I mean, so well performed in this production. He's really exciting. He's the kind of casting that I think Cinderella, slash, bad Cinderella on the back of my bucket hat, really needed in the quirky Prince Sebastian role. Not that I'm inviting that to return to a professional stage in the uk, but if it does, look no further, he's perfect for it. Another absolute standout in the supporting cast was Steven Madsen, who played Alexander Shkuratov. And he was reprising this role because he's done it before in Australia. And he is very stoic and indifferent to the idea of getting married to Muriel. But he's trying to clear up some bad PR after making homophobic comments. And they take this in a slightly different direction in the stage musical versus with the film. Because in the musical, and I'm pretty happy about this, this might be a spoiler. Spoiler alert. He actually comes to the realization that, as he says, he is the gay, which he repeats several times. And it's so funny. His delivery is so, so funny. And he does a really perfect job in committing to this nonsensical, slightly stereotypical character. Now, this was actually a very extensive cast. I'm not going to have the opportunity to talk about every single performance, but I thought that Helen Hill was particularly great as Tanya. She's the leader of the local mean girls. They were all pretty brilliant alongside her, but the way that everything she did was just slightly exaggerated. Exaggerated, very well played. Jacob Warner, Joseph Peacock and Lena Patty Jones were also hilarious together as Muriel's trio of slightly disengaged siblings who do nothing but stare with glazed eyes at the television while repeating the same few monosyllabic words. Not even words, utterances really. And then you have Muriel's parents. Laura Medforth played her long suffering mother, Betty Heslop. Again, I think there's elements of this character's arc that could be staged and written a little different, but she brought a really tremendous heartbreaking sentimentality to it. Really affecting. And Darren Day, meanwhile, was perfectly obnoxious as Muriel's father. This loud patriarchal presence who seems to be a fixture of so many of these Australian films turned to musical. It was giving Barry fife. He, I thought was terrific. And finally, we have to talk about abba. Brilliant. Every time they popped up. And again, exaggerated and campy, giving you like, sketch show ABBA parody. They were portrayed by Jamie Doncaster, Aaron Doss, Jasmine Hackett and Bronte Alice Tadman. All of them fantastic. Which brings me to the end of my thoughts about Muriel's Wedding. I really do hope that this is not the last that we've seen of this show in the uk. We've had several shows recently that have had these big splashy one month regional premieres and then haven't necessarily announced a further life. I hope even though the material could be developed a little further and even though there's probably more that could be done to tailor it a little bit, a little more to British audiences, but we do get to see Muriel's Wedding once again in the uk. I didn't even mention the fact that they have this really fun feature where you can buy certain seats where you get the chance to be escorted on stage and sit on stage as wedding guests during a wedding scene and play ABBA on kazoos. I mean, imagine the show touring around the country and getting to go to your local theater and go up on stage and be part of that show. I mean, how fun is that? You could buy someone a ticket and surprise them with it. I mean, there's so many possibilities. In any case, hoping for an appropriately bright and sunny future for Muriel's Wedding and as always, I would love to know what you thought of it if you saw it as well in the comments section down below. Thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. Oh it crept back in at the last minute. We were so close. Bye bye. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. 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