City of Melville Main Hall

Captain Moonlite Rating

★★★★★

Click if you liked this article

Most Aussies are familiar with the legendary Ned Kelly but there’s another Irish born bushranger that perhaps few have ever heard of and that is Andrew George Scott, also known as Captain Moonlite.

After the show I had to look him up to check whether he was a real person or fictious and indeed, he was real whose bushranging adventures spanned from the 1860s to 1880.

The Melville Theatre Company brings his life to stage in the musical Captain Moonlite created by Jye Bryant. The musical follows Moonlite as a run of bad luck and circumstance leads him toward an unlikely gang of bushrangers. Rather than presenting the familiar colonial outlaw as a rough, swaggering folk hero, its central figure is educated, articulate and homosexual. As such, the show challenges the audience to look beyond the romanticised image of the Australian bushranger and consider the human being behind the legend.

The production is particularly effective in its attempt to move beyond the conventional bushranger myth, presenting Moonlite not simply as an outlaw, but as a complex man shaped by misfortune, identity, and circumstance.

One of the production’s strongest features is its live instrumental music. The Irish influence in the music brings a sense of authenticity to Scott’s background.

Presenting Moonlite’s life as a musical form however, does not always feel essential to the telling of his life. His story is already dramatic and compelling enough as a clergyman, a prisoner, an outsider, and ultimately a bushranger whose personal identity challenges many preconceived ideas about Australian colonial masculinity. There are moments when the song and dance interrupts rather than strengthens the force of that narrative. The attempt to present the show as comedy also felt unnecessary. The material has enough theatrical power to stand as a straight dramatic work without needing to be framed as a musical. The production is most successful when it focuses on Moonlite himself.

Nevertheless, the production team did a terrific job in presenting the show, with Jamie Lea in the lead role.

I was impressed with the production’s achievements of the seamless transition between locations, particularly from the confinement of the jail cell to the formality of the courtroom then to intimacy of the boarding lodge room. The shift from jail cell to courtroom becomes almost symbolic from isolation to spectacle.

Captain Moonlite is an ambitious reimaging of the Australian bushranger and portrayal of Andrew Geroge Scott.

To book tickets to Captain Moonlite, please visit https://melvilletheatrecompany.au/seasons-2026.

Photographer: Alan Gill

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

The Chairs

The Chairs Rating

★★★★★

Click if you liked this article

The Chairs is a creative vaudeville, circus style play about an elderly couple, simply known as the Old Man and the Old Woman presented by The Melville Theatre Company and directed by Virginia Moore Price.

Written by Eugene Ionesco in the 1950s, it is quite an absurd tale in which the elderly couple reflect on their life over the 70 years they’ve been married. This indicated that they would be in their 90s. At the beginning I struggled to understand what was happening and their conversations seemed nonsensical. A sign of the deterioration of their memories and their minds.

The couple prepare to receive guests for a lecture of some sort which never eventuates and their guest of honour, the Orator. They frantically gather chairs for the guests and dump them onto the rotating floor in a comedic fashion. The guests, however, are invisible to the audience. Whether the old couple are imagining them or whether they are actually real to the couple, left me unsure.

The couple’s fragmented recollections and contradictory chronologies evoke signs of dementia. This is particularly evident when the Old Woman recalls having a son who died when he was a child and reflecting on the grief of losing a child but the Old Man recalls the couple not being able to have any children and instead reflecting on the grief of his mother’s death.

Although it is clear they both deeply care for each other, there are moments of regret and a sense now that their lives are very soon coming to an end. Throughout the play the Old Woman continuously reminds the Old Man how he could’ve been a head general or a head comedian much to both of their despair. The Orator Raven who whilst is visible to the audience throughout the entire play as he sits on the rotating floor, is only visible to the couple towards the end perhaps signifying death.

Ionesco gives plays into the delusional state of mind of the elderly couple by having them set in a circus ring with both dressed as clowns and the Old Man performing as a mime artist.

Zane Alexander and Solanje Burns deliver a phenomenal performance as the Old Man and Old Woman holding the attention of audience for the entire play without an interval. There were moments of interaction with the audience when they both tumble off the stage and weave themselves into the audience while they continue their nonsensical dialogue.

At the heart of The Chairs is two people longing to be seen and heard, trying to make sense of the lives they have lived.

To book tickets to The Chairs, please visit https://melvilletheatrecompany.au/current-production.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to What's The Show

Connect Online