I went out to the Cleveland District State High School production of “Back To The 80s” tonight and absolutely loved it. The jokes are bad, the songs are bad, the story-line’s corny, the acting is hammed up and the costumes make every member of the cast look hideously unattractive. What more can you want in a musical about the 80s? I was invited along by Rochelle Wheater who played “Tiffany” the female lead and was particularly interested to see her performance as she’s interested in auditioning for a part in my upcoming musical. She certainly didn’t disappoint though I’d like to hear her sing songs that were better suited to her range, and definitely with a better sound engineer – for most of the musical she came across as a fairly weak voice, however in the final scenes of the musical they managed to find the volume knob and her voice shone through quite impressively. The show however was well and truly stolen by Ross Lambley in the role of “Feargal McFerrin III” – the school geek. Brilliant, just brilliant. The character plays a very minor role in the story line but Lambley’s dynamics and expressionism brought cheers from the audience in response to his every line. Particularly impressive was his bass voice (particularly in the second act). It was used to great affect in Video Killed the Radio Star and that number in particular kick started the audience in non-stop laughter. Other stand outs were the voices of Melissa Copson (“Cyndi”) and Tegan McErlain (unnamed singer number 2). Both girls have wonderful strong voices and really got into the spirit of the songs well. A big commendation must also go to Blake Miles (unnamed singer number 1) who sung very well despite being given songs with a range well beyond what should be expected of an adolescent male (Jitterbug in particular). It’s worth noting that he actually managed to hit the high notes quite accurately but was a little weak on them until the final verse of Jitterbug where he absolutely nailed “that high”. As is often the case in musicals the star of the show “Corey Palmer Jr” (played by Liam Flenady) doesn’t get much of a chance to really excel and is instead relegated to the thankless job of holding the story line together. Flenady did this extremely well and took what few opportunities he had to shine and produced enthusiastic responses from the audience. He was in fact the only actor who managed to actually elicit a groan from the audience at one of the particularly corny lines. You have to see it to see how brilliantly the audience was played. It would definitely be remiss of me not to mention how good the band sounded. It was fantastic to hear a full stage band again and they were extremely tight and sounded great. Overall, it’s one of the best nights out I’ve had in a long time. It is an amateur production, some notes are miss-pitched and at times the acting can seem a little stilted, but that all fits so well into the story line and general feel of the musical that I’d be willing to believe it was deliberate. You do tend to find yourself in shock for the first five or ten minutes as you get used to the style of the musical though but once you’re in the 80s groove and are prepared for the corny jokes, you’ll absolutely love this musical. Of course if you don’t like 80s music or corny jokes, this musical is your worst nightmare. Personally I’m a huge fan of both 80s music and corny jokes so I give it a big two thumbs up. Tomorrow night (Saturday 29 May) is the final performance, tickets are only $10 and are available at the door. If you’re anywhere near Brisbane “do yourself a favor” (to quote a legend of the 80s) and go see it. Heck, give me a yell and I’ll go with you.