Sybylla Melvyn blazes like a comet in the night sky, although one with a path that can’t be predicted with any accuracy whatsoever. Sybylla is an agent of chaos, crashing her way towards a life much bigger and brighter than she would seem destined for.

This wild girl from drought-stricken Possum Gully at the turn of the 20^th century wants to live an independent life of the mind and will let nothing, not even a madly eligible suitor or two, get in her way. 

In other words, Miles Franklin’s unruly heroine was made for the musical theatre stage.

Sybylla makes a song and dance about everything so give them to her. She is bursting with passions even she can hardly describe so let Kala Gare, the incandescent Sybylla, vault over the back of a chair or hurtle on to the top of a piano.

Let her break the fourth wall frequently to chat or sing directly to the audience because she so desperately needs to be heard.

Gare exults in this monster of a part, infuriating and captivating in equal parts. She revels in the fact that Sybylla is often, quite frankly, a pain in the arse. She is rarely still, which is incredibly invigorating, while having moments of reflection and tenderness that reach the heart.

Gare even manages – just – to convince you that when the show gets a bit too sentimental, which it does a couple of times, it’s an aberration that can be quickly shut down. 

That’s having your cake and eating it too but the creative team earns it.

Franklin’s book is related by Sybylla and has no point of view other than her own. The challenge here was to keep that intense focus on Sybylla and her ambitions while giving those in her orbit their moments in the sun. 

The crack team of songwriters Mathew Frank (music) and Dean Bryant (lyrics), co-book writers Bryant and Sheridan Harbridge, exceptionally witty designer Marg Horwell and director Anne-Louise Sarks navigates this tricky territory with great zest. 

Everyone in the supporting cast gets a moment to shine as the music ranges far and wide in style from rock to ballads and much in between. 

Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward as the first aspirant to Sybylla’s hand, Frank, animates an amusing 1950s be-bop number. Melanie Bird’s Blanche channels Madonna in her Material Girl phase: basically what a woman needs is a man with money. Raj Labade’s Harry gets to be the archetypal romantic, for all the good it does him.

All the actors play instruments and are pretty much always on stage. Most play a couple of characters, sliding freely between well-doubled roles and ensemble parts. A warm sense of comradeship envelops the stage and flows to the audience.  

The message is clear. The present lightly veils the time of the novel’s setting. How can it not in a world that contains the trad wife movement?

My Brilliant Career really hits home as Sybylla rebels against the domestic drudgery forced on her mother (played so movingly by Christina O’Neill). Mother will endure it; Sybylla will not.

Sybylla’s glorious too-muchness has inspired a clutch of adaptations for film, theatre, television and ballet but this version feels closest in spirit to Franklin’s outpouring of desire for a larger existence. 

And if it sends people back to the book, all the better.

MTC was smart to arrange a return season in Melbourne and following three-city tour for My Brilliant Career so quickly after the show’s rapturously received premiere only 15 months ago. On February 19 Bryant, Frank and Harbridge won big at the 58^th annual AWGIE Awards, bestowed by the Australian Writers Guild. The trio was given the $120,000 David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre and also bagged the AWGIE Award for best script in Music Theatre.

Brilliant.

Canberra to March 15; Sydney, March 21- May 3;  Wollongong, May 8-17.

A version of this review first appeared in The Australian.