Gold Coast Review – The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals: A madcap comedy show

By Douglas Kennedy

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals

Music and lyrics by Jeff Blim and a book by Matt and Nick Lang

Directed by Fiona Mumford

Music director Alex Angus

Choreographer Charlotte Carozo.

Produced by StarKid Productions and first staged at the Matrix Theatre, Los Angeles in 2018. Now playing at the Javeenbah Theatre and.

An ensemble cast of 10 plus a five-piece band.

Season runs until February 22, 2025.

Bookings: info@javeenbah.org.au 

Duration: Two hours (plus interval)  

The irony in The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, now finding a following at Nerang’s Javeenbah Theatre Company, is some of the best scenes feature song and dance numbers.

While the producers say it was inspired by the sci-fi B -movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this reviewer believes it owes a lot to the much-loved 1970s spoof, The Rocky Horror Show.

While Rocky Horror took its lead from a wide range of B -movies – from the 1930s to the ‘60s with a Frankenstein-style monster – Didn’t like Musicals uses similar principals.

For instance, there’s a couple of innocent everyday romantically inclined characters, Paul (Benjamin Bristow) and Emma (Sabre Lilly), and a host of wacky over-the-top crazies straight from the horror genre.

This time around they happen to be zombies, one of the stables of the movie horror genre, and even a mad professor (nicely presented by Jake Goodall).

Playing the straight guys in this kind of show can be tricky, but Benjamin Bristow and Sabre Lilly handled it well, while Maegan Weir as the wacky cop, Sam, had a stand out voice and stage presence.

And we can’t overlook the band, led by musical director Alex Angus, that was first class and right there on stage.

The story, in keeping with these kinds of shows, is pretty simple as the good folk of a small town called Hatchetfield are taken over by some malevolent force from space.

The mysterious interloper has them all singing and dancing, like folk in a musical, before turning them into zombies.

Happens every day.

Paul is a guy who doesn’t like musicals, but he meets Emma at his local coffee shop and quickly becomes attracted to his destined-to-be romantic interest.

While a host of supporting characters slowly turn into all-singing all-dancing zombies, Paul and Emma are left to save both the day (and the world), with the help of Professor Hidgens (Jake Goodall).

But not everything is as it seems and late in the show there are all sorts of twists and turns.

The Guy Who Didn’t Like is good fun, toe tapping, musical comedy with everyone giving their all.

If you like horror spoofs, with a lively and engaging band, this is a show to catch.