Musical day! Most people balk when they hear that I go to see one musical a week. Well, I’ll have you know that not all of them charge obscene amounts for a ticket, just the big shows in the centre of Melbourne. Sometimes I go to see community theatre, which is generally cheap for the calibre of performance (they take these things very seriously). Sometimes I’ll see a school production, and on my most desperate nights, I resort to watching a musical movie and taking copious amounts of notes on how it fails the source material. Also, I’m pretty frugal…got to save all that money for the theatre!

Tonight’s big show: Barry, Not ‘Er! It’s about a couple of con men from London who travel to Melbourne for their greatest job yet. They’re infiltrating the growing Melbourne market for aluminium planks and trestles, and they plan to make off with untold amounts of glorious profits. Also, they both have magical powers.

So they’ve got their aluminium platform careers going well, they’re approaching the management, but one of them (Barry) falls in love with a girl who works on the shop floor, much to the chagrin of his partner. Anyway, turn out SHE has magical powers, and is ALSO a con woman. All that is just the synopsis, so I can’t wait to see how things progress from there. Both Channel 4 News and News Talk Deal gave it five stars, and the opening number Pranks ‘n Trestles has already gone golden on the Broadway charts. Plus I hear the theatre partnered with some actual aluminium platform people, and they lent their services to cover the stage on platforms and trestles and ladders and all that. Not your average musical, clearly!

-Jocelyn