Stella, a New Australian Musical: review

The world premiere of Stella, a new Australian musical, tells the stirring and affecting life story of literary great Stella Miles Franklin with fitting confidence and winning style. A work long in gestation, Stella happens to arrive shortly after 2025 hit musical My Brilliant Career. Stella gives audiences the welcome chance to learn about the woman behind the acclaimed Australian novel, which was written at the beginning of Franklin’s long and often challenging career. Achieving the all too rare feat of writing book, music, and lyrics, Monique diMattina has crafted a wonderfully cohesive work. Song flows naturally from speech, with interspersed dialogue economically pushing storytelling ever forward. Completely avoiding the inherent risk of “wikipedia dumps” that plague bio-musicals, diMattina shows a light hand with exposition, rightly trusting the intelligence of the audience to follow Stella in her life journey from rural Australia to America and Europe before later returning…