On Stage: Ordinary Days

An entertaining musical presented by four talented performers ensures a new production of Ordinary Days lives up to the show’s feel-good reputation.

Clovelly Fox’s production of American Adam Gwon’s 2008 musical, playing at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs stars Bobby Fox, Sarah Morrison, Melanie Bird and Joel Granger.

Each gives a great performance in the show which follows the lives of four characters – Warren (Granger), Deb (Bird), Jason (Fox) and Claire (Morrison) – in downtown New York.

Their stories and interactions are told through 21 songs.

One of the stories tells of the relationship between Warren and Deb. The lackadaisical Warren is a wannabe artist, who is employed to babysit a cat owned by a graffiti artist currently in prison for painting pithy sayings across New York.

Warren is spreading the artist’s vision by making flyers with the sayings.

While distributing his flyers he comes across a note-book which he discovers belongs to Deb, a stressed-out graduate student who has moved to New York from a small country town. The book contains all of Deb’s research for her thesis on Virginia Woolf.

Warren arranges to meet Deb at the Met to give back the book, a move that Deb finds extremely frustrating for several reasons.

When the two eventually meet their different personalities are clear – Deb is cynical, bad tempered and extremely stressed; Warren is relaxed, friendly and sweetly naïve.

Despite their differences the two eventually form a close friendship.

The other story tells of Jason who is moving into his girlfriend Claire’s apartment.  It’s clear the move isn’t going well especially as Claire doesn’t want to throw out her belongings to make space for Jason.

Despite Jason’s obvious love for Claire the two fight frequently. The tragic reason for Claire’s attitude and inability to commit to Jason provides one of the more poignant moments of the 80-minute musical.

While the two couples never meet the actions of Warren have a major impact on the relationship between Claire and Jason and on Deb’s outlook on life.

All four actors do a great job of bringing their characters to life and the production allows each to show their acting and singing prowess.  Bird and Granger’s characters ensure both also get to showcase their excellent comic skills.  Bird’s Deb is particularly funny and entertaining thanks to her presentations of songs including Dear Professor Thompson.

At the same time all four ensure the main theme of Ordinary Days – the search of four strangers for connection, purpose and meaning in a large impersonal city – is evident throughout the show.

Ordinary Days is playing at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs until August 31.  Visit the fortyfivedownstairs website for tickets and further information.

*Photo credit: Ben Fon

Jenny Burns attended the opening night as a guest of the producers.