Susan Boyle, the singing sensation who held a damning mirror up to contemporary Western popular culture and made Simon Cowell finally pipe down, has a musical about her extraordinary rags to riches and renown tale, called I Dreamed A Dream, and it's coming to Australia next year.
Named after the Les Misérables song Boyle performed in the first round of the third Britain's Got Talent series, gobsmacking Simon Cowell and the rest of the world, it tells Boyle's life story, and will be showing for five weeks each in both Melbourne and Sydney.
The synopsis claims it details "Boyle’s life, from her birth…and the hand which life dealt her…up to the present day. From her humble beginnings of being born into a large working class family, and sharing a three-bedroomed council house with a family of ten…to where she is today - a global star and an inspiration to millions - a woman who beat the odds and changed the way the world looked at people," so it's clearly going to range all the hooks from relatable to aspirational.
Additionally, it will give insight into Boyle's experiences of "the pain of lost love, the heart-breaking tragedy and loss of the anchors in her life, and being cut adrift in a lonely, threatening world, then finding strength and solace in her faith, to the life changing experience of Britain’s Got Talent."
Seeing as myself, or no one I know, has ever become an overnight media sensation, racking up millions of YouTube views, releasing an album that shot to the top of the charts globally, had a musical about their lives commissioned and performed, or covered songs like 'Cry Me A River', 'Wild Horses' or 'I Dreamed A Dream', I feel like the only person that would just get Boyle at the moment might be PSY. Actually, that's a lie, heaps of my friends have covered 'Wild Horses', 'cause it's "Wild Horses", derr.
A lady that I presume is also immensely talented vocally, Elaine C. Smith, will play Boyle, but I hear that Sus yells "Sike!" and jumps onstage for a couple of songs at the end. Sounds epic.
Tickets go onsale Monday 26 November.
- Amy Robinson
