"The Fraudsters"

A contemporary fairytale musical comedy in which lawyer Boy meets waitress/script-writer Girl. (Apologies to Gershwin, Porter, MGM, Fred Astaire and Ella Fitzgerald – just to begin with.)

Opening sequence: a dawn-light train commute, followed by a montage of corporate hell in a Sydney law firm. (Because this is a musical, people carrying papers will collide in showers of paper.)

Our hero, Boy, is shown at a desk pouring over a booked titled “The Law of Commercial Fraud” as daylight fades beyond his window. He has files. Lots of files. He picks at dinner from a takeaway container in an empty office, then pushes it, hardly touched, away from him.

Music: The Waifs “Sound the Alarm” (music sample) and “Lies” (no lyrics available, dammit).

Insomniac, late at night, he drops in at the only café in his beach-side suburb that is still open, where the Girl is working the shift until close. Girl: It’s late to be in a suit. Boy: I’m a solicitor, the money’s good but the life sucks. Girl: I’m the opposite – I Got Plenty o Nuttin.

Girl: What would you like to order? Boy: I’m hungry – I’d like the Frim Fram Sauce [adjust lyrics for male singer, this was first a Nat King Cole number].

She sits and sips her tea while he eats. She tells him she’s writing a screenplay and has learned to read tarot cards. She reads his, they are BAD and end with The Fool: a leap into the unknown. She locks up as he leaves, and he walks her home. She wears her hat, even though it's night, which he finds crazy but cute.

Sadly, Girl announces at her door that this is the place she shares with her boyfriend and her other girl Flatmate. Boy is still reeling from meeting her, and sings he is just happy to be “On the Street Where You Live”.

Montage suggesting Boy’s days pass between office and falling asleep in his flat: in the roaring traffic’s boom, in the silence of his lonely room, he thinks of the Girl – Night and Day.

The Boy returns to the café where a young couple are disgracing themselves under Girl’s watchful eye and confesses that if He Loves and She Loves – "can’t you love and I love too?"

She replies that she has a Boyfriend - and she Can’t Help Loving Dat Man [scroll right the way down to item 11 to play the Ella Fitzgerald version], but decides they can still be friends. It’s late on a Friday and they have no plans, so they dance ‘til three. In fact - they dance Cheek to Cheek.

Disaster strikes, and the Girl’s Flatmate runs off with the bond, the rent and her Boyfriend. Girl declares that while Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, too much has been falling in hers. [scroll down to item 13 to play the Ella Fitzgerald version]

The Boy hatches a crazy scheme to get her screenplay to a firm client with connections, and encourages her to set up a tarot-reading stall in the meantime. Girl asks: why are you helping so much after I turned you down?

Boy replies: For all the great memories you’ve given me - the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the way you’ve changed my life, the night we danced till three – They Can’t Take That Away From Me.

Unknown to Boy, Girl’s Boyfriend returns, with grandiose promises to take her away and declares There’s A Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York. He also confesses the Flatmate dumped him.

Girl replies sarcastically, “Goody Goody” and tells him “I hope you’re satisfied you rascal, you”.

Boy’s plan to influence firm client into buying Girl’s script fails miserably, and he is given a month’s notice to quit the firm. He returns dejected to the Girl. She replies that it might be a good thing, and she in fact, Is Beginning to See the Light [or scroll down to item 15 to play the Ella Fitzgerald version here] and besides, her tarot-reading business is BOOMING. She is now a commercial success, while he is penniless.

Boy and Girl elope to a small south coast town and set up a fortune-telling business, realising that while They All Laughed and said the two never could be happy, they still got together - and who has the last laugh now?

Song and dance number – big finish.