Singing in the Rent with Urban Display Suite

“What do you do if you’re dumb and pretty?” so begins Urban Display Suite – The Real Estate Musical Spectacular. With merciless speed and acrid clarity our four all-singing, all-dancing real estate hosts launch into a virtual tour with a Wiltshire StaySharp knife to the heart of middle class Australia’s obsession - the property market.

More cabaret than musical, Michael Dalley and John Thorne’s songbook is adequately and enthusiastically executed by Michael Dalley, Lyall Brooks, Sharon Davis and Gabrielle Quin. All the performers are having a a ball with the material and it shows. Numbers such as “I’m Sure I’d Love My Neighbours If I Knew Them”, “McMansion Façade” and “Only Forty Minutes” add weight to both sides of the scale, highlighting Australia’s combination of naivete and greed.

Urban Display Suite manages to thread Lee Kernigan, The Da Vinci Code, Caroline Springs, Two Girls One Cup, spray tan and Joanna Murray-Smith amongst many other pop culture references. It’s not particularly nutritious but it is immensely funny. If you don’t believe we can produce local content that is both engaging and witty get thee to this.

Urban Display Suite is on at The Lawler Studio – MTC until January 21, 2025
Tickets available at the MTC Theatre Box Office
(03) 8668 0800 or book online at www.mtc.com.au/uds.aspx