Sport for Jove is known and loved for its exemplary productions of Shakespeare; has been for nearly 20 years.

So what’s it doing staging Bright Star? And no, it’s not a drama based on the Keats sonnet of that name. It’s a musical by actor and musician Steve Martin (book and music) and singer-songwriter Edie Brickell (music and lyrics). A bluegrass musical.

Bright Star at Hayes Theatre Co. Photo © Robert Catto

Interestingly, though, you can see some connection with Shakespeare if you look hard enough. The sonnet too. It’s not in the language, which in Bright Star’s book and lyrics tends to be bright but commonplace. That’s often the case in country music. Directness is prized and the everyday exalted.

The overarching themes, though, are complex ones of family lost, the persistence of love and the courage to carry on. 

Tragedy is interleaved with comedy, music is obviously important and, at the end, there are scenes of recognition and reconciliation that could be paying homage to Twelfth Night. 

Is that stretching the conceit too far? Possibly. Nevertheless, co-directors Miranda Middleton and Damien Ryan make a good case for Bright Star, which has had limited success since it first hit the stage in San Diego in 2014. 

A Broadway run was relatively short, probably because Bright Star is a piece that thrives on intimacy. Enter the small Hayes Theatre Co auditorium, looking a treat decked out with period designs by Isabel Hudson (set), James Wallis (lighting) and Lily Mateljan (costumes) and stuffed to the gills with life-affirming energy.

Hannah McInerney (left) and company in Bright Star at Hayes Theatre Co. Photo © Robert Catto

Hannah McInerney steps forward to sing Bright Star’s statement of intent, If You Knew My Story, and the place lights up. A throb in the voice is a big part of this music’s heart-on-sleeve emotional heft and McInerney has it. She is incandescent.

McInerney’s Alice Murphy is at the centre of Bright Star but by no means its only star, even if she has not just a past but a Past. There’s a head-spinning embarrassment of riches in the conservative, small-town setting.

The story moves back and forth between 1946 and 1923. In the later years Alice runs a respected literary journal and has a keen, highly critical eye for talent. Young Billy Cane (Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward) has returned from the war to his home in North Carolina and aspires to be a writer. Those two threads are intertwined, along with the lives of others. 

There’s a lover for the young Alice, amusing friends for Billy, controlling parents and a defining moment, based on a true incident, that throws Bright Star into a very dark, melodramatic place.

It’s a lot, and the first act feels over-stretched. Like so many before and after them, Martin and Brickell didn’t fully absorb the skill of music-theatre editing although happily did leave in an excellent joke relating to punctuation. 

And yet, that too-muchness is part of the show’s winning vitality, at least in this production. The large cast dives in with all talents blazing and there are lots on display. Everyone is a quadruple threat when you add the requirement to play an instrument or two or three. Here it looks the most natural thing in the world to play the cello, say, while negotiating movement by Shannon Burns that keeps the show spinning deliriously.

Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward and company in Bright Star at Hayes Theatre Co. Photo © Robert Catto

Traditional bluegrass instruments – banjo, fiddle, hand percussion, accordion, piano and more – make a joyous noise. Both prominent on stage, music director Alec Steedman and music supervisor Victoria Falconer lead their flock to thrilling music-making. If the price of entry is the occasional extraneous or overwrought song then so be it. 

Ryan, who is Sport for Jove’s founder and artistic director, has this to say in a program note: “I have fallen in love with musicals! Plays where people fail to start singing when under pressure no longer make any sense to me.”

A little joke, perhaps, but you know what he means. 

Bright Star plays at Hayes Theatre Co, Potts Point Sydney until 5 October.