Here is musicals

DOlly Parton is big in many ways – the hair, the bust, the voice, the status as a country music legend, the sunny reputation. But it is the latter that is a problem for a show as it is here, which is supposed to use their iconography for some seriocome dramatic missions. Any meaning that you can extract from parton are intrinsically limited, endless platitudes that have risen over an empty together like fairy lights.

On one level this is a tribut show, and maybe that's the only level on which it really works. Star and co-creator Tricia Paoluccio not only have an uncanny talent for mimicry, but for the exact bend and the syntax of partons of crystalline voice. She also has the same tireless ebullae, a monster truck with a dazzling white smile that was painted over his bumper. The majority of the show of the show results from her presentation, which is simple, but also exactly.

If we just didn't have to enforce everything else. The co-author and director Gabriel Barre (with non-specified articles from Bruce Vilanch) hangs a number of parton-song-clean real hits such as 9 to 5 and Jolen, but also many inferior land filler in a painfully thin story of a solip-sisten manner that falls in love with his youth.

Kevin (Dash Kruck) is hidden, depressed and self-medicine during the covid pandemic in the attic of his parents. He is separated from his friend Jeremy (Bailey Dunnage), an incredibly young hedge fund manager with an attitude problem, while inexplicably he lowers for his high school friend Sean. Suddenly, Dolly materializes from a cabinet poster that shines and bursts with aphorisms. It will help to make some major changes in Kevin's life possible, to “stop looking, look in mirrors and look out of windows”.

This device, with Parton as a fantastic vision and guardian angel, has already been done much better than here. Muriel's wedding The musical used ABBA in a similar way, but where they show that the imagination modulated and deepened, it comes back here and expands it incessantly. As soon as Parton appears, she simply beats Kevin with her positivity until he surrendered. It is conceivable what parton could do in real life, but it is tedious and dramatically breastfeeding.

The authors introduce some elements of sharpness and depth and use the feeling of devastation of Covid, his tendency to take off our earli one – although Fiona Harris and Mike Mcleish have a mixed success to adapt the work to an Australian context. But Kevin is an anodyne and meatless protagonist who is less interesting than the authors seem to think, and his bow is predictable and Schmaltzy. In combination with partons of almost aggressive optimism, it is as if you are adding a bowl of sweeteners to a bowl.

Technically speaking, production is sharp and committed, full of tricks and stage missions and illuminated by Jason Bovaird with maximum enthusiasm. The design of Paul Wills is very detailed and surprisingly versatile. Barrel pace and attention to changing moods means that the show is never boring, even if we know exactly where it leads at any time. The narrow gang with musical direction of Andrew Worboys is great.

Applications are stained and schematic apart from Paoluccios. Smaller roles tend to gare caricatures and cruck cannot summon enough charisma to counteract Kevin's tendency towards moping and self -pity. As a parton itself, Paoluccio is both Drawcard and Dinchpin, smart subversive (as far as the hagiographic script is concerned) and happily convincing. Your accent wobbles from time to time, but for the most part it is an impressive performance.

Fandom-diese tendency to idolize our heroes and to detainees-the engine that holds here that they are running again, but without an appropriate interest in glory ID is its anestheside quality, the effect is strangely repulsive. Like an advertisement with repetition. Paoluccio is very talented, and in a direct tribute law, her performance could be in reminiscent and true. However, this vehicle suggests more than it should deliver, and we have a show that is too serious and not serious enough. Parton enthusiasts will probably love it, but the rest of us can feel that we stare into an abyss with rhinestones when we reach for southern comfort.

• Here you come back to the comedy Theater, Melbourne, until July 20th and then return from October 23 to November. It will also go on Perth's shelf Theater, the Theater Royal Sydney, the Civic Theater Newcastle, the Canberra Theater Center and the Adelaide's Theater in You Majesty. See here for all data.