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Musical Theatre In Australia By: Tony Sheldon |
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Source: Theatre Australia, Sep/Oct 1977
Tony Sheldon examines the state of our musical theatre arts
The most popular, and subsequently the most financially successful form of theatre in Australia must be the musical comedy. Since the beginning of this century this country has produced, or imported, world class presentations of the best (and sometimes best forgotten) musicals from Broadway and the West End. In fact, since 1900, over 300 musicals have been professionally produced in Australia. Do you know how many of these shows were written by Australians? About 40. And that’s the good news! The bad news is that out of those 40 shows, only 13 have been seen in more than one state. And when you find that one of our most popular and frequently revived musicals is Hamlet On Ice – it boggles the mind. So why is it, when we have a perfectly respectable reputation for straight plays, that we can’t turn out a My Fair Lady type smash hit? If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be writing the show instead of this article, but at least we can cheer ourselves up by looking at what we have accomplished.
1934 was the year that it all started. After 30 years of imported musical theatre, a gentleman named F.W Thring (Frank’s father) came into theatrical management, leasing the Princess Theatre in Melbourne and the New Tivoli in Sydney, and presenting the first All Australian musical, Collits Inn, starring the one and only Gladys Moncrieff. With a book by T. Stuart Gurr, centred around an actual inn in NSW, and songs mostly by Varney Monk, the production also boasted Australia’s first revolving stage, which contributed much excitement to the show once the cast of 64 learned how to walk on it without falling over. Collits Inn played to packed houses, chiefly because of Miss Moncrieff and the talented cast, which included Robert Chisholm, George Wallace, Claude Flemming (who also directed) and Marshall Crosby. Having set the precedent, F.W Thring engaged Miss Moncrieff for his next project, another Australian musical, The Cedar Tree in 1935. Thring was to present only one more show, Mother Of Pearl starring Alice Delysia, before his death in 1936. Meanwhile, J.C Williamson’s, not to be outdone, secured the services of Madge Eliot and Cyril Ritchard and staged Blue Mountains Melody, with a score by Charles Zwar, who had also contributed songs to Collits Inn. Evidently none of these shows was a source of inspiration for any would be writers, as we were not to see another home-grown musical for twenty years.
So we went back to the parade of overseas hits, usually with imported stars…Harry Langdon and Robert Coote in Anything Goes (1936), Melton Moore and Katrin Rosselle in I Married An Angel (1937), Australians Don Nichol and Marie LaVarre in Let’s Face It! (1942), Cicely Courtneidge and Thorley Walters in Under The Counter (1948), Oklahoma! With Robert Reeves and Carolyn Adair (1949), Brigadoon with Ken Cantril and Gwen Overton (1951) and many more. One J.C.W. production of note – in 1947, Jenny Howard was announced as the star of the new American musical Annie Get Your Gun, but something must have come between the lady and her contract as the role went to a young American girl who had been living in Australia for eight years. Apart from making Evie Hayes a star, Annie has seen frequent revivals her providing a vehicle for such proven talents as Nancye Hayes, Toni Lamond, Bunny Gibson, Gloria Dawn (twice) and, currently in Adelaide, English actress Dorothy Vernon.
Right: Madge Elliot in Hold My Hand (1932)
Meanwhile, back at the billabong, disgusted by our non-existent musical theatre scene, a chemist names Eddie Samuels wrote a show called The Highwayman. With American performer Carl Randall willing to direct the property, Samuels made a tentative deal with J.C.W., but the Taits stalled for so long that Samuels and Randall booked the recently unemployed Annie Get Your Gun chorus and a cast including the popular comedian Charles Norman, and mounted the musical at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne, opening in 1950. The show was unanimously praised by the critics, particularly the Act 1 finale – a genuine Aboriginal corroborree – which naturally brought the house down. EMI thought enough of the score to record an album some years later, leaving us a lasting monument to a very ambitious project. Reedy River was unique in that it had a plot written around the songs, rather than the other way around. After three unsuccessful plot lines had been discarded, Dick Diamond constructed a story about a group of shearers’ strike. The songs are all traditional and can be replaced at the producer’s whim, with the exception of the title song, based on Henry Lawson’s words, and Helen Palmer’s “Ballad of 1891”. The show premiered at Melbourne’s New Theatre in 1953, and was subsequently seen in all capital cities.
Left: Evie Hayes in Annie Get Your Gun
Lola Montez by Alan Burke, opened in a “try-out” production at the Union Theatre in Melbourne in 1958. Set in Ballarat in 1855, the story concerns the famous Spanish dancer who comes to town at the peak of its gold fever and captivates the men with her Spider Dance. The combination of Broadway musical type staging and ocker dialogue was a trifle unsettling, but the score, by Peter Benjamin and Peter Stannard, included our first hit showtune, “Saturday Girl” introduced by Neil Fitzpatrick, and other songs ranging from pretty dreadful to very good indeed. When the Trust restaged the show at the Elizabethan Theatre in a full scale version, their chief mistake was casting English dancer Mary Preston as Lola, as she was too young for the role and less than a brilliant singer. Lola Montez closed at a loss of £31, 581. A scheduled revival at the Independent Theatre in 1972 featuring Sheila Bradley, Bunny Gibson and Peter Carroll might well have given the show a new lease of life had the production eventuated.
Although Albert Arlen conceived The Sentimental Bloke in 1950 (George Johnston was to write the original script, but dropped of the project because of prior commitments), the show was not to reach the stage until 1961, when it was presented for a week at Canberra’s Albert Hall, Sir Frank Tait and John McCallum caught the last performance and arranged for a professional production to play a six week season at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre. The six weeks turned into five months, followed by a nine month tour which grossed over £250,000. The Bloke has continued its success over the years, most recently on ABC-TV in 1976, starring Graeme Blundell, Geraldine Turner and Nancy Hayes, and the Arlen/Lloyd/Thomson/Nancy Brown collaboration is probably our most well known musical.
Two more shows have used Australian history as inspiration. The first, The Ballad Of Angel’s Alley (1962), by television writer Jeff Underhill and Bruce George, deals with the “push” wars of the 1890’s. A great artistic success in its first production at the Union starring Kevin Colson, Mary Hardy, Reg Livermore and Marion Edward, Angel’s Alley broke no box office records, but frequent revivals indicate the show’s continued popularity. A Rum Do, (originally titled Everybody Sniff Your Neighbour) was the inaugural production at the QTC in 1970, the central character being Governor Lachlan Macquarie. The Rob Inglis-Robin Wood musical has not been seen outside Queensland to date.
In recent years, the musical theatre in Australia has prospered quietly, due to the efforts of a small group of people who seem undaunted by failure and encouraged by their successes.
Don Battye and Peter Pinne have a list of credits as long as your arm, but only a small percentage of the public can claim know their work. The Melbourne based writing team enjoyed their first successes in the early Sixites with A Bunch of Ratbags and It Happened in Tanjablanca, a spoof on Hollywood musicals of the 40’s. Tanjablanca reappeared some years later in a revised version under the title Red, White and Boogie (featured Pamela Gibbons as Viya Condias, a Brazilian movie star). Their next project, Caroline, conceived by Leila Blake who also played the lead role of Caroline Chisholm, was produced at St. Martins Theatre in 1971 with the assistance of a $40,000 special projects grant from Sir Henry Bolte. Sweet Fanny Adams, their last full scale musical to date, played a successful season at Melbourne’s Le Chat Noir Theatre Restaurant. Set in the 1930’s and dealing with the rivalry between two madams, Kitty Lang and Fanny Adams, the frequent double entendres and eminently hummable songs provided perfect entertainment for the dining/drinking audience. But it seems the Pinne and Battye team are not content to cater to one type of audience; their songs have embraced many styles and periods, making them most versatile and prolific musical comedy writers in the country.
Left: Ken Shorter and company in Lasseter (1971), Old Tote Theatre Company
William Orr, in his capacity as producer/director, has made a notable contribution by commissioning, and sometimes adapting, musicals based on established properties. Eleanor Witcombe and John McKellar’s Mistress Money, based on The Miser with bits and pieces from four other Moliere comedies, was commissioned as a vehicle for Gordon Chater and Sheila Bradley. The music, by Dot Mendoza, was modern and typically “musical comedy”. Twelve years later, When We Are Married, based on J.B Priestly’s comedy, was created for the talents of Johnny Lockwood and Jill Perryman, and the songs by Tommy Tycho and Alan Kitson were once again in the modern idiom. I doubt that Bill Orr would have presented either of these shows with dreams of a ten year season. Both shows were created specifically for the intimate Phillip St. Theatres, and besides, “vehicles” are not designed for immortality. They are designed for bums on seats. However, at least Mr Orr has demonstrated that a show need not be peculiarly Australian to be an Australian musical.
The Nimrod Theatre, since it’s inception, has enjoyed great success with musical plays, particularly Ron Blair’s Flash Jim Vaux (1971), with music by Terry Clarke and Charles Colman (half the score based on traditional airs), and Hamlet On Ice, by Boddy/Blair/Cooney/Bond & O’Donoghue. The Hamlet show is little more than a string of silly Vaudeville gags and pretty tunes with banal lyrics, held together by a terrific idea, but it is produced frequently and most successfully throughout the country. Flash Jim, on the other hand, is quite serious stuff, with a host of wonderfully seedy characters to enliven the difficult plot, and some haunting songs to boot.
Of course there have been other Australian musicals of note: Kenneth Cook’s Stockdale, Reg Livermore’s Lasseter, the rest of the Arlen-Thompson-Brown collection – including Girl From The Snowy and Marriages are Made in Heaven – John Howson’s Razamatazz…a plethora of rock operas, such as the ill-fated Nuclear, Hero and Man Of Sorrows…like I said, there are 40 of them. And what of the unproduced shows waiting in the wings? Livermore’s Ned Kelly, David Mitchell’s musical biographies of Lily Langtry and Bea Miles, Tim Gooding’s Rock-Ola? Maybe one of these will travel overseas and become another Chorus Line. When performers such as John O’May, John Diedrich, Collette Mann and Ron Challinor are forced to write their own shows simply because nobody else will, that could mean we will lose these people to the more creative climates of England the U.S. And if the Australian musical theatre has produced anything of importance, our performers must head the list.
So why should they be out here reproducing Broadway musicals when they can be in New York doing ‘the real thing’? The least we can do is try to keep them here with more home grown material. Whether the Music Theatre Forum earlier this year was just a bunch of people nodding sagely and secretly being thrilled just to be in the same room as Stephen Sondheim, or whether it was a valid and educational conference that will produce tangible results, remains to be seen. The musical theatre in Australia must not be dismissed as hopeless; we’ve come this far – it would be nice to think we’ve learned something from our mistakes. - Tony Sheldon |
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right: Edwin Ride and Rosemary Butler as The Bloke and
Doreen