Music
by Menagerie Choir
Hey Music! I [heart] You
Teatro 1
Review by Lucy Ballantyne

School choir was always one of those things I pretended to loathe. Admission to enjoying singing the alto part in ‘Doo Wah Diddy’ would have been tantamount to social death in the mind of a tween girl, and a scowl was prerequisite for every rehearsal. Menagerie, Perth’s resident hipster choir, reclaim that repressed joy in their most recent show Hey Music! I [heart] You – an unabashed tribute to the joy of song.

Hey Music I Heart You features Menagerie’s 85 amateur singers, led by Claire Coleman, sharing the stage with local Perth musos (Odette Mercy is the clear standout) whose stories about why it is they love music form the narrative of the show. Don’t get me wrong – it is daggy. But like most relics of dag, it’s utterly joyous. The charisma and talent of Claire Coleman and the not-at-all-reminiscent-of-Pentatonix arrangements take the edge off, and those earnest choir-nerd moments are peppered with enough humour to feel like we’re all in on the joke. This is all the fun of school choir, with a millenial’s sense of irony.

The unrivalled highlight of the show comes when Coleman turns the baton to the audience, splitting us into parts and cobbling together an arrangement of Boyz II Men’s ‘End of the Road’. Just like in school, my choir date and I still rolled our eyes at each other, thinking we were too cool for this. But just like in school, we kept singing along. I might not have totally recovered from ‘Doo Wah Diddy’, but this is a very enjoyable first step.

Check it out at the Fringe World guide — but he rest of the season is sold out.