Sweet Charity, coming soon to The Q, is one of those tricky things, a “thoughtful” musical.

Inspired by Federico Fellini’s black-and-white film, Nights of Cabiria, it revolves around the optimistically naïve Charity Hope Valentine, a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall. 

After a series of disastrous personal encounters, in most productions, a sign goes up at the end saying: “And so she lived… hopefully… ever after”. 

All that is grist to the mill for director Joel Horwood, who tells me: “I’m just drawn to good stories. 

“It’s a musical with a really interesting story; Neil Simon wrote the dialogue which is very witty and you don’t always say that in musicals. In many musicals, the dialogue goes off at the expense of the big numbers. Sweet Charity is character-driven and it felt like a good fit.”

And it comes with show-stopping numbers such as Big Spender, The Rhythm of Life and I’m A Brass Band. 

“Musicals are often fluffy and paint the world through rose-coloured glasses. There’s not a happy ending in this one and the ending is not tied up,” he says.

“Neil Simon didn’t write the book for many musicals, Promises, Promises being an exception, but when he wrote musicals the book shines through,” he says.

Horwood is staging it on a small scale with only 20 actors and a bit of doubling, believing it’s a good opportunity for audiences to see a really good story.

“I’ve been in a few musicals,” he says. “But mostly ones that don’t involve much dance, that’s not my strength.”

Not to worry, Amy Orman, who plays Charity, is besotted with dance. She works by day at Bom Funk Dance Studios in Queanbeyan and as creative director for Kix Arts Productions. 

Born in Canberra, she studied dance at McDonald College in Sydney, took out a musical theatre degree at The Chicago College of Performing Arts and spent time in NYC. 

While working shows for Princess Cruises, she met her husband, an American sax, clarinet and flute player, but after they decided they wanted to have a family, Canberra was the obvious place to settle.

Orman says of her coming part: “It’s a dream role of mine. I’ve been singing If My Friends Could See Me Now since I was a kid, though I didn’t understand what it meant. I am a dancer and so is Charity, she expresses herself through dance.”

The show, she says, needs careful handling – “even with its witty script it can go awry” – but she has found a copy of the Fellini film where the ending is even darker, suggesting that Neil Simon got it right.

Orman believes that anything with a female-centric exploration is bound to be relevant today, so even though it was originally about women in the ’60s who didn’t have any say, it will hit the spot.

“The show has some big numbers but is a bit more than that, showing dance as not a very nice industry while suggesting that getting money from men by dancing is a kind of empowerment,” she says.

Sweet Charity, famous enough for its tunes and its Neil Simon script, is also known for the 1966 Broadway production choreography by Bob Fosse, but it’s not mandatory, so choreographer James Tolhurst-Close won’t be using the exact Fosse choreography, though the flavour will be there.

“You will see those iconic moves, but we’re creating our own moves, but based on Fosse – the turn of the head, the small hand movements and other gestures that are left of centre.”

Sweet Charity, The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 29-May 18.