Altar Boyz opens tonight in Sydney, where it is scheduled to play til August 2, before touring the country. It opens in Melbourne on Wednesday, August 13.

The cast includes Cameron MacDonald (Matthew), Dion Bilios (Mark), Tim Maddren (Luke), Jeremy Brennan (Juan), and Andrew Koblar (Abraham).

The official website is here and you can buy tickets to the Sydney and Melbourne season here on Ticketmaster.


SYDNEY
Tuesday - Friday: 8.00pm
Saturday 2.30pm & 8.00pm
Sunday 2.30pm & 6.00pm

MELBOURNE
Tuesday 6.30pm
Wednesday - Friday: 8.00pm
Saturday 2.30pm & 8.00pm
Sunday 2.30pm & 6.00pm

Seymour Centre Listing


The father, the songs, the holy jokes
with Emily Dunn & Elicia Murray with Garry Maddox
11 June 2008

CROTCH GRABS, pelvic thrusts and spank-the-pony moves are stock-standard manoeuvres in the repertoire of any self-respecting boy band. Jesus-on-the-cross is not.

Altar Boyz is a musical about Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham, the all-singing, all-dancing members of a Christian boy band on the last night of their national tour.

As World Youth Day approaches, the director of the Australian production of the off-Broadway hit, Kate Gaul, said if any devout Christians were concerned about the production, which features a Jewish character and a Christian pin-up struggling with his sexuality, she hadn't heard about it.

"It's a parody," she said. "The laughter from the audience is the laughter of recognition. That's the beauty of the show."

The cast has even been invited to perform three songs during Youth Day festivities, though Gaul said she hadn't decided whether to leave the crotch-grabbing moves in.

"It's a little way off yet."

Cameron MacDonald plays Matthew, the group's hunk. He said while some castmates had attended Hillsong church services to research their roles, he was surprised to find his own persona just waiting to bust out.

"I'm your Justin Timberlake," MacDonald said. "In the 1990s, you couldn't miss the boy bands."

Jeremy Brennan, who plays the swarthy Juan, said he was getting into the boy-band lifestyle, taking advantage of a free gym membership that came with the part.

"The whole boy-band thing - you sell your soul to it," he said.

Altar Boyz opens at the Seymour Centre tonight.

A boy band's altar ego
Jo Litson
1 June 2008

Spread the word! The Altar Boyz are on their way "to altar your mind" and save your soul with their infectious bubblegum pop tunes, funky dance moves and youthful missionary zeal.

A Christian boy band that"makes the Backstreet Boys look like gangsta rappers", to quote The New York Times, the wholesome fivesome are not actually the real deal but characters in an award-winning off-Broadway musical.

Altar Boyz is a satirical comedy that pokes gentle fun at Christian pop and rock music, evangelical fervour and boy bands -- gleefully embracing all the cliches of the genre.

Extolled by audiences and critics, the show has been running in New York for four years and a new Australian production hopes to find its own faithful following in Sydney.

"It's very well written," director Kate Gaul says. "All the jokes are multi-layered, well thought out and very punchy. And the music is good pop music with great five-part harmony."

Lyrics include "Jesus called me on my cellphone" and "God put the rhythm in me so I could bust a move!"

The boyz in the band -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham -- each represent a different type.

Matthew is the hunky leader of the pack; Mark is the sensitive "is-he-or-isn't-he-gay?" type; Luke is the bad boy; Juan is the sexy Latino, and Abraham is a good Jewish boy who writes the songs.

At the start of rehearsals the cast studied boy bands like Backstreet Boys, *NSync and New Kids on the Block.

"So the vocal styling and dance moves mirror all of those, with a bit of Ricky Martin and Justin Timberlake thrown in," says Cameron MacDonald, who plays Matthew.

The show is staged as if it is the final concert of the Altar Boyz' Raise The Praise tour.

They have a machine called a Soul Sensor, which scans the audience to see how many souls need saving, the aim being to reduce that to zero during the concert.

"But something goes wrong on this night," Gaul says.

"They can't get the numbers down and they have to start exploring what their own personal relationships and ambitions are."

Gaul says the show "is not offensive in any sense" but "uplifting", with a positive message about brotherly love, tolerance and harmony.

In fact, with the blessing of Cardinal George Pell, the cast will perform three of the songs at a World Youth Day event in The Domain on July 16 with Pope Benedict XVI attending.

Altar Boyz, Seymour Centre, June 7 to August 2. Bookings:9351 7940.


O Lord, these boys in need of divine help
Reviewed by John Shand
The Sydney Morning Herald
BOY bands and born-again, big-money, TV-evangelical Christianity are certainly subjects ripe for satire. Unfortunately, the musical Altar Boyz parodies merely by aping and sustaining the banality of both. At a stroke it makes woeful shows such as Dusty and Shout! seem like works of genius.

Were it a school production it would still be lame. As it is, it hits a new low note in the tattered history of the musical.

Conceived by two Americans, Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport, with the book by Kevin Del Aguila and music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker, it purports to be a comedy, yet assumes this can be achieved without resort to wit.

There are just three laughs: when the prayers of Juan (Jeremy Brennan) to find his parents are answered, when Mark (Dion Bilios) recounts being depilated by Anglican thugs as a child, and the mildly amusing Epiphany, with its gay-pride-spoof refrain of "I am a Catholic".

The stock characters - the mincing gay, the tight-pocketed Jew - suggest the concept of imagination may be one with which the writers are unfamiliar.

The director, Kate Gaul, has clearly been puzzled by how to relocate an urban American rapping character like Luke (Tim Maddren) to an Australian setting, so he utters such idioms as "y'all" in a broad Aussie accent. The presence of the Mexican Juan is also a curiosity, although Brennan has a fine time playing the part.

The music is a concoction of anthemic rock, '70s disco, hip-hop and big ballads, played by a quartet (led by Robert Gavin) with a wretchedly thin sound.

The singing of the five boys, completed by Cameron MacDonald and Andrew Koblar, is much better, but lacks any killer punches, and Antony Ginandjar's choreography, which demands tight synchronisation, is often raggedly performed. The designer Andy McDonell creates a simple boy band stage set to which Luiz Pampolha's lighting add glitz.

If nothing else, look out for Epiphany being a big hit around Randwick in a month or so.

Boy band conjures up divine aura
Reviewed by Deborah Jones
The Australian

IT'S confession time. Once upon a time and long ago I had a Catholic girlhood, and thus was able to appreciate fully how the cult off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz celebrates as well as gently skewers Christianity. You really do have to be across the wedding feast at Cana and the walking on the water to get maximum value from The Miracle Song, for instance, and have enough Bible smarts to plumb the depths of silliness in a band whose members are called Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham.

Abraham (Andrew Koblar), by the way, isn't at all out of place in a Christian context. As he cogently argues, when he came into a church where they were all meeting, he saw a Jew hanging on a cross.

Altar Boyz manages to get away with a quip like that without giving the slightest offence because the show -- thriftily presented as the last night of the band's Raise the Praise concert tour -- is encased in a bubble of generationY-style innocence.

No matter how many times the Boyz clutch their genitals, allude to sexual matters or make light of deep religious matters -- mainly because their knowledge is so superficial -- they remain a sweet boy band dedicated to spreading the word via uplifting song and dance.

There's a clever mix of knowingness and sincerity in the songs, enjoyably eclectic in style and substance.

"Jesus called me on my cell phone," warbles Matthew (Cameron MacDonald), and an irresistible picture of a techno-savvy mega-church pastor comes to mind. The connecting patter is less consistently successful but, at 90 minutes without a break, Altar Boyz sensibly doesn't outstay its welcome.

MacDonald, Koblar, Dion Bilios (Mark), Tim Maddren (Luke) and Jeremy Brennan (Juan) throw themselves into the fray like eager puppies. Under the direction of Kate Gaul they work their bottoms off to entertain, so it's unfortunate that the show was pretty rough around the edges on opening night.

With the honourable exception of the four-piece band led by Robert Gavin, Altar Boyz was stronger on enthusiasm than on the super-sharp accomplishment that would really raise the praise.

Bless them, though. There is something terribly touching about young actors giving their all to the point of exhaustion. One has new respect for the work that goes into creating a ditsy Christian boy band.