A musical comedy romance that's set in the 1980s

The 1980s was an era of many things, some of which people prefer to forget.  Fashion items included  big hair, bubble skirts, stonewash jeans, shoulder pads, duffel coats, skinny ties, and leg warmers. Boy George, Michael Jackson and Madonna were cool. Prince Charles and Lady Diana had a fairytale wedding and a happy marriage (or so we thought). Greed was good, according to yuppies and Wall Street's Gordon Gekko. Kids went to blue light discos and watched John Hughes movies. And much, much more.

The Wedding Singer, a 2006 Broadway musical based on the 1998 Adam Sandler movie of the same name, is a  celebration of the '80s and a romantic comedy.  It has an original score with songs evoking the period rather than being a jukebox musical. Queanbeyan Players is presenting the show at the Q.

Set in Ridgefield, New Jersey in the mid-1980s, it centres on Robbie Hart (played by Dave Smith), the title character.

"He's a lover of love, that's why he's a wedding singer," Smith says.

"He got big with one number that he wrote, It's Your Wedding Day."

This gave him some local fame and made him sought-after to perform at weddings with his bandmates, loud and crass Sammy (Tim Stiles) and camp George (David Santolin), but his own personal life isn't so hot. His fiancee Linda (Emma White) leaves him at the altar on their wedding day - she wanted to be married to a rock god, not a wedding singer - and with both parents dead, he lives in the basement of his grandmother (Lauren Nihill).

Robbie  becomes depressed and bitter and his gigs suffer but, at the urging of his friend Julia (Emily Ridge), a waitress he met at an earlier wedding, he pulls himself together somewhat, but sings only at bar mitzvahs.

Julia seeks his help in planning her upcoming wedding as her fiance, wealthy Glen (Michael Jordan), is too busy with Wall Street business matters.

"They have a connection," Smith says.

And when Julia's best friend Holly (Josie Dunham) decides to go out with Robbie, things get that little bit more complicated.

"It's 100 per cent the movie," Smith says of the story, even though most of the songs are new (a couple are taken from the film.

Plenty of op shops were ransacked to provide the '80s costumes -powder-blue suits, narrow leather ties, sequins, and more.

Ridge, in her 20th show and first lead role, was born in 1991 and admits  her'80s knowledge is a little lacking: "Some of the cultural references I've had to Google."

She knew who Cyndi Lauper was, for example, but not Billy Idol.

Although she enjoys the movie she didn't want to watch it again so she wasn't influenced by Drew Barrymore's performance as Julia: she wanted to create her own version of the character.

Music director Jenna Hinton says the show has "a really fun score - there are a lot of complexities in it". It features Somebody Kill Me and Grow Old With You from the movie as well as songs that draw inspiration from bands like The Cure and numbers like Billy Idol's White Wedding.

Sarah Hull is co-directing the show with Amy Dunham, saying they complement each other's strengths  − Hull's realistic attention to detail and Dunham's ability to draw the best out of actors – and that The Wedding Singer is a show they've loved for a very long time.

"We think the story  is fun, we love the music," Hull says.

She's old enough to recall the latter part of the 1980s and had a lot of memories - "my matching bike pants and crop top  ... fluoro socks ... Cats, Les Mis."

As the cast ranges in age from 17 to "ages I can't say", many are too young to recall the era first-hand, but Hull says, "I think they enjoy getting into the outfits".

As for a deeper meaning in The Wedding Singer, behind the colourful surface, she thinks it provides an alternative to the greed-is-good/material girl ethos that permeated much of the decade.

"It asks people to decide what's really important in life."