The kitchen is an unlikely setting for a musical, but for a lot of women it's the only place they ever get to sing. I for one regularly perform showstoppers at the stove while making chicken soup and my kneidels have never suffered - even when I throw in a few jazzy dance moves. And I am not alone.
Some time ago, Joanna Weinberg, a South-African living in Australia, created a one-woman show - Sinksongs - while doing the washing-up. Now it's been made into one of the cheeriest little films I've seen this year, albeit with a title that conjures up Ursula Andress in a toga rather than super-talented Laura Michelle Kelly in a pair of Marigolds.
Kelly, who won an Olivier as Mary Poppins, plays housewife Elspeth Dickens, a mother of unruly twin boys living in picturesque Tasmania with her whale-saving husband (Boyzone's Ronan Keating) who is permanently away at sea. Lonely with only the toddlers and a goat called Stephen for company, Elspeth channels her frustration into writing amusing little songs which she performs on a webcam in her kitchen.
She decides to go public with her talent on the net, quickly building up a following which in turn attracts the attention of an advertising agency which invites her to be the star of a computer campaign. Bollywood has long been using such thin storylines to fuel hours of elaborate musicals and while working in India, I grew to love them in much the same way I loved this more compact (104 minutes) but equally beguiling production by director Mark Lamprell. Kelly is captivating as the domestic chanteuse and in his small role Keating doesn't disappoint.
