Curve,
Leicester
22nd April 2025
"You’re terrible, Muriel!"
Britain
has a long-standing love affair with Australian cinema. The quirky humour,
eccentric characters, and bittersweet stories strike a chord with audiences;
they’re more endearing and relatable than the glossier Hollywood outputs and
are a better match for our sardonic humour and low key sentimentality. Over the
years many Aussie crowd-pleasers have had the musical theatre treatment – Priscilla
Queen of the Desert, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge –
to varying levels of success. Now PJ Hogan’s 1994 reflection on small-town life
and big dreams has been brought to the UK stage and I’m pleased to report this
version of Muriel’s Wedding is anything but ‘terrible’!
Porpoise
Spit – the back end of nowhere – is home to Muriel Heslop and her family of
deadbeat layabouts. Life seems to be against Muriel, she has no job, few
friends and the prospect of romance is a far-flung fantasy. Branded a
‘failure’, Muriel is unceremoniously dumped by her popular friends for
‘bringing them down’. So she filches funds from her parents’ credit card and
embarks on a life-changing cruise where she meets old school friend, Rhonda,
who provides a means of escape from the shame-filled existence in Porpoise Spit
to the exciting, free-spirited streets of Sydney. Muriel fashions herself a new
existence as ‘Mariel’, but as she weaves her once harmless fantasies into a
reality built on lies, her relationships and sense of self begin to implode.
Just how far will Muriel go to obtain the perfect white wedding and make her
life ‘as good as an ABBA song’?
Hogan,
along with composers Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall, has numerous
challenges in translating Muriel to the stage, but they deftly
navigate these hurdles to produce a hugely likeable show filled with warmth,
heart and just the right amount of bite.
For
what on the surface appears to be a light-hearted comedy, the show packs
in a lot of plot and navigates a spectrum of tonal shifts from
farce and satire to romance and tragedy. Furthermore, on paper, Muriel is not a
nice person – she’s selfish, deluded and is a pathological liar. In the wrong
hands these aspects could be the ingredients for a stodgy pudding that leaves a
bad taste in the mouth. But here the creative team ensure the plot is well
paced and, while the show is perhaps a little long at nearly 3 hours, all the
characters are given room to breathe, so we’re invested in their stories.
Muriel is a brilliantly flawed heroine, her foibles are equally endearing and
frustrating as the audience roots for her despite (and perhaps in part due to)
her numerous faults. This is helped in no small way by a stellar central
performance by Megan Ellis. Ellis manages to be both relatable and eccentric,
while her comic timing is perfectly pitched and she has a comfortable chemistry
with Annabel Marlow as her rebellious friend, Rhonda. Darren Day and Ethan
Pascal Peters give great supporting performances as Muriel’s power-hungry
father and corrupt Mayor, and dorky potential love interest, Brice. Laura
Medforth makes an impact during the most emotional moment in the show as
Muriel’s downtrodden mother, Betty, and at the other end of the spectrum,
Stephen Madsen is a riot during his brief appearance as Russian Olympic
swimmer, Alex Shkuratov.
Perhaps
the biggest creative challenge relates to the Muriel’s parasocial relationship
with ABBA; so much of the film’s humour and heart stems from this musical
obsession that the music and story are inextricable. Here, Miller Heidke and
Nuttall’s new songs are triumphantly woven between classic ABBA hits, such as ‘Dancing
Queen’, ‘Waterloo’ and an incredibly touching rendition of ‘SOS’. The Swedish
superstars act as a Greek Chorus throughout the show and often pop up with
great comic timing. Of the original songs, standouts include the hilarious
‘Can’t Hang’, sung by the bitchy quartet of Muriel’s ex-friends, ‘Ride or Die’,
a cute platonic love song between Muriel and Rhonda, and ‘Why Can’t That Be
Me?’ which provides insight into Muriel’s motivations – she sees girls online
‘with hair like [hers]’ that are adored worldwide, and wonders what it is that
other people see in her that makes her the butt of all jokes. I also enjoyed
the recurring leitmotif in ‘Meet The Heslops’, an impeccable piece of
characterisation achieved in just a few monosyllables uttered by Muriel’s idle,
bogun siblings.
Simon
Phillips' production is slick, and technically competent while focusing on the
human aspects of the story. Matt Kinley’s set utilises projections in an
effective yet unobtrusive way to ground the musical in a contemporary setting,
and Gabriela Tylesova’s thoughtful costumes bring the characters to life. The
creative team have managed to stay true to the original film’s spirit while
crafting a new take on the story which feels fresh. Muriel’s Wedding is
everything you’d want from a modern musical comedy – it’s joyful, touching,
featuring a breakout central performance from Ellis, and, most important of
all, it’s very, very funny.
Muriel’s
Wedding plays at Curve until Saturday
10th May.
For
further information please visit: https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/muriels-wedding/
