Bananaland | Kate Miller-Heidke & Keir Nuttall
I appreciate the arts. It’s always wonderful to see other people’s creations, especially original ones. Drawing inspirations from the origin story of The Wiggles and real life experiences, Keir Nuttall and Kate Miller-Heidke created Bananaland during the pandemic. Currently in its world premiere season at QPAC, Bananaland is a new Australian musical comedy that celebrates the art of making music and boldly mocks its limitations and possibilities to change the world.
All images credit: Darren Thomas
The music in Bananaland consisted of three distinct stands, with each adding layers to the storyline. The first half of the show primarily focused on pompous and angry theatrics, that followed the journey of Ruby Semblance’s punk/rock band Kitty Litter, or what she called it an ‘Onstage Conceptual Art Slash Music Orientated Happening’, that despite after playing at five hundred shows, they only had one fan ‘Stephan King’.
This contrasted to the bright and bubbly children’s music in the second half of the show, when the band accidently became a successful children band the Wikki Wikki Wah Wahs. The third viewpoint was the soulful songs throughout that allowed the audience to dive into the inner thoughts of the characters, while Ruby struggled to find her way back to her true vision to play powerful music. The songs and lyrics in Bananaland were beautifully written. One performance stands out included Ruby Semblance singing solo ‘Fallback’, which described an emotional response towards those sensible folk who ponder her ambitions might be unrealistic.
The story also explored the relationships between characters. Karen Semblance’s ballad solo through a phone call. It captured her maternal desire to go home to see her son little Toby while touring with the band. Similarly, the warm and powerful duet ‘Grow Up and Be Kids’ created a sincere sisters bond between Ruby and Karen, reminiscent of Disney’s ‘Frozen’ moment. While I felt certain characters in some acts got the chance to develop a strong emotional connection with the audience, it was taken away quickly by the awkward transitions and broken up by the drums rather than lingering a bit longer, causing some imbalance in the overall structure.
Promoted as a musical comedy, some jokes in the show were witty. Others, however, felt repetitive and overdone to me, which defeated its purpose. Yet, the dialogues highlighted several social matters, such as the generations issues, social media, cancel culture, and dilemmas that people in music industry faced.
The space was cleverly used. The stage setting and backdrop changes effectively transported the characters to different locations in the story. This worked well together with the excellent lighting design, especially using false prosceniums and mobile neon lighting in the dark space, which created a strong illusion in various scenes. The costume design by Simone Romaniuk was wonderful. It featured all-black punk-rock outfits with studs and belts, along with colourful overalls, which complemented the band’s rebellious and vivacious essence as the plot progressed.
Despite the crowd-pleasing standing ovation at the end, I felt that the ending was rushed and forced in the two-hour slow paced musical, as there were a lot of time given at the beginning to establish the conventional characters. This led me to ask the big questions: what has the band decided to do now? What was the ultimate message? I didn’t quite get it as I was watching the show. I was left a bit confused and conflicted. By all means, I applaud Bananaland’s originality on the Australian stage. It is uplifting to see something completely homemade. Perhaps, it is meant to be utterly absurd, just-utterly absurd- like arts.
