Heaven knows it's tough enough trying to get a job in these economic times without the daunting prospect of a cut-throat arena where every other candidate is your ultimate nemesis. You just might lose your life, if not your humanity, before you find employment. Yet Apply Within takes us trippingly through the various trials and tribulations of the dreaded job hunt with game gusto, all with resolute smiles and pointers on how to avoid the many pitfalls. This comes within the loose plot thread of a developing romance between two competing applicants.Actor John Joe Flynn, playing the main protagonist Joe, was a real winner here. As a candidate adrift in a sea of CVs and interviews, he established himself firmly at the centre of our affections - his overt masculine sexuality tempered fantastically by his endearing hint of a lisp and impish grin. His voice was rough, but honest and unadorned; expect a real treat from his solo in ‘Where To From Here?’ - it gave me goosebumps, which I don't often experience.Ian Lily and Kate Mounce provided an endless source of comedy in their revolving set of interviewer types, Lily's hilarious senile old man standing out as particularly memorable. The two complemented one another well. Mounce is a much stronger actor and dancer than singer while the opposite is true of Lily, whose wrists tended too much toward the limp.On a technical level, the harmonies throughout are fairly unadventurous and I feel that much more might be made of them; some of the songs build up towards climaxes that simply aren't realised. When they do appear, such as in the closing number and title song, ‘Apply Within’, they are wonderfully handled and balanced. The lyrics are superbly penned and stay more on the cute side of funny rather than the cheesy.I would question the suitability of this particular production to its venue, although this need not have been an issue had some performance aspects been addressed. The choreography was too big for the small venue, lacking intricacy or sophistication. Aside from Flynn, whose variation of both tone and volume was pleasing, the songs were performed mostly in the we're-on-a-big-stage-far-away-from-the-audience style, which avoided the potential additional dimension of intimacy with the audience.None of the singers is the strongest performer you'll find at the Fringe, but there is a real sense of character commitment and engagement from the cast, who interact very well with one another. For a fledgling musical, fresh out of the workshop process, this is definitely worth seeing – I saw three musicals later that same day, and by the evening ‘Apply Within’ and ‘Like Song’ were still the tunes I was humming.
