Eight years in the making and inspired by smelly nappy, a new musical takes on the strange happenings of the Twist family – with Paul Jennings’ approval It has been more than three decades since children’s author Paul Jennings first wrote the scripts for Round the Twist, but Australians of a certain age will still have a favourite episode. It might be the one about a tube of lipstick that made everyone want to kiss you, or perhaps the tale of a remote that could rewind and fast forward time (used to disastrous effect during a spaghetti-eating competition). Maybe you have fond memories of the Twist family – siblings Pete, Linda and Bronson, and their widower dad, Tony – and the strange lighthouse they called home. Have you ever, ever felt like this? For 36-year-old composer and playwright Paul Hodge, the episode etched in his mind involved a pair of shoes so smelly their stench could knock someone out – a superpower deployed by Bronson Twist while yelling “Up the pong!” In 2016, Hodge had been searching for an idea for a new family-friendly musical when his memory of that episode activated like a sleeper agent – and convinced him to bring Round the Twist back in a new format, for a new generation. Continue reading...