Dean Bryant, one of Australia’s most acclaimed directors, reflects on bringing Bloom to Sydney audiences after a wildly successful opening run in Melbourne.
When Melbourne Theatre Company asked if I was interested in directing a new musical created by one of the Working Dog team, I jumped on board immediately. New work is exciting, and new musicals even more so, as you juggle the many moving parts in service of telling an original story through song. Working Dog have captured the spirit of our culture so well that I wanted to learn from one of their key team how they do it.
When I was at university, I bought a copy of the screenplays for their seminal current-affairs satire Frontline and would marvel at the construction and humour of each episode. I’m not sure I even saw most of them in their finished form. The words alone led me into their satirical yet warm way of seeing the world, and I was hooked. It was a formative cultural experience that has shaped the way I want to tell stories.
For me, the most memorable communal experiences we can have in the theatre are those that have humour and heart while telling us something about the culture we live in. The potential for Bloom to be moving and funny was there in the draft I read, and Tom and Katie have been completely open to magnifying that as we’ve moved forward over numerous drafts and workshops in the year since.
Bloom requires an acting company that covers characters aged 21 to 82. Musicals are demanding – harmonies and choreography take time and a lot of memory – and I wondered what the rehearsal room would feel like. I didn’t anticipate how joyous it would be. Whether it’s the combination of these particular actors, or the blending of generations that inspired Tom to create the piece in the first place, there has been a lightness of spirit that has buoyed us as we’ve fought the usual battles of creating a new musical.
Melbourne audiences took Bloom to their hearts from the first preview. Rarely have I worked on a piece that generated such goodwill across so many demographics. Original musicals so rarely get a first outing, let alone a second, that it’s a treat to take the Pine Grove bus up the Hume to Sydney, with most of the original cast still on board, joined by the legendary John Waters and the fiendishly funny Christie Whelan Browne.
Ultimately the piece illustrates something we all know; that the quality of care we extend towards each other is what determines quality of life, something we struggle to prioritise in a culture that values profit above all. The experience of making Bloom, however, has been full of care and it’s a joy to share that with you.
Photo: Charlie Kinross