Drum Media Review – 21 November 2006

LIFE'S A LEMON

Raylene Starr isn't, she boldly asserts, a dumb Sheila. Raylene is a comic healer and the creation of the accomplished multiply award-winning Maggie Scott, who's no dumb Sheila either, as her original, one-woman rock musical, Life's A Lemon more than proves. Indeed, Raylene has every potential to become an iconic character.

We're transported through the annals of Raylene's tumultuous life, one that has a tragic underpinning - which is what makes it so uproariously funny. Even her start in life was less than promising, being born the tenth of 13 kids ("we were poor, but we were shoplifters"). But Raylene has a virtual epiphany when she gets turned-on to feng shui, realising her ennui is due to her kitchen table being in the wrong place. She's the bogan in all of us.

Scott has contrived an utterly brilliant script, integrating Raylene so consummately that the latter is part of the former. It's funny on the page, and so much funnier thanks to her performance skills, which include impeccable timing, astonishingly strong, well-modulated singing and wonderful parodying of '8os music video dance stylings (she's first and foremost a comedic
actress). Life's A Lemon is a peach of a show with lots of life in front of it. One can easily envisage it for city and comedy festivals both here and overseas, as well as for TV; indeed, it's almost readymade. It's no mean feat to sustain an hour-and-a-half of comedy, ballads and flat chat rock songs when it's just you onstage.

If I had to change anything, it wouldn't be the script, performance, lighting, sets or costumes (though, here and there I might have RS move a little more). I would look at more changes to video backdrops, maybe a couple of go-go dancers and a live band. And I'd improve the sound. Other than in those peripheral and rather technical ways, finding fault here is like finding a post-prandial policy on a serviette in Kym Beazley's back pocket.

Season now finished, Riverside Theatre, Parramatta
LLOYD BRADFORD