Sydney Reviews

With our aging population, it makes sense for the STC to program two productions addressing this issue in their current season.

Earlier this year, Nancye Hayes gave a sublime performance in Amy Herzog’s beautiful and complex 4,000 Miles about a grandmother and her grandson. Over the course of a few weeks of living together, the young, grieving man learns a lot about how to live from his brave and adventurous grandmother, whose life, as she ages, is getting smaller.

Bloom, the STC’s second production on this theme, is set in an aged care residential home. Tom Gleisner (Lyrics and Book) and Katie Weston (Music) have created a new Australian musical about being old, which, though cloaked in wit and razzle-dazzle, raises particularly poignant concerns. 

Bloom addresses the issues of constant cutbacks and reduced standards of care. It also raises the profound existential questions confronting us all as we age – the loss of self-worth and autonomy. The “inmates” in the hell-hole that is Pine Grove Residential Care Home struggle with relinquishing their independence and confront the reality of their new physical and mental limitations. They also have the sad realisation that family won’t necessarily visit. But it’s a musical comedy, so they sing and make satirical jokes about it.

Like 4,000 Miles, Bloom chiefly centres around a growing friendship between a young man and an elderly woman. The show opens with the arrival of these two characters. Rose, played with great panache and sensitivity by Evelyn Krape, is a new and reluctant resident. She is a retired music teacher who has led a rich, creative life and is not ready to submit to the stultifying confinement of the nursing home. Finn (Slone Sudiro), a callow music student, is just there for free lodging in exchange for doing chores.

The show has a very Australian, knockabout feel, which is immediately appealing. It’s so nice to see a home-grown work that captures an Australian sense of humour and our vernacular. And I loved that the performers (mostly) sang in Australian accents. Gleisner’s comedy writing is very strong, rich with playfulness and knowing jokes to the audience. His writing is just as good when he plumbs more emotional levels.

Christie Whelan Browne wittily plays the callous management consultant, Mrs Macintyre, who is brought in as Pine Grove’s manager to trim costs. Concerned only with the financial bottom line, she casually says the quiet part out loud about her desire for austerity measures, blithely disregarding the residents’ well-being or feelings.

Whelan Browne is excellent as the comic villain. Her role is the focal point for much of the satire, representing the embodiment of the very worst of the aged care industry. She gets many of the best comic lines, whilst being unapologetically callous to great satirical effect. She moves dinner time to 4.30pm, and then 3.00pm, to save on staff costs, bans a glass of wine with meals and cuts out all excursions.

Dean Bryant has a terrific knack for staging and comic business, and he directs with a very assured hand. This is a show that feels easy, but nothing has been left to chance. Bryant has assembled a group of outstanding performers, equally talented as singers and actors. The company's senior members, Evelyn Krape, John Waters, John O’May, Maria Mercedes and Jackie Rees – every one of them a theatre icon – draw on their vast resources of skill and charisma.

From the comic turns of Maria Mercedes as the wheelchair-riding kleptomaniac Betty, to the outrageous flamboyance of retired thespian Roland (John O’May), the lovely character work from John Waters as the adorable, phlegmatic old codger/senior romantic lead, Doug, and of course, Evelyn Krape’s Rose. It was a joy to watch this talented bunch of theatrical larrikins.

The three young performers – the romantic leads, Ruby (Vidya Makan) and Finn and the moral heart of the show, Nurse Gloria (Christina O’Neill) all have striking voices.

Two wonderful solo vocal performances arrive as delightful surprises late in the production. The show is almost two-thirds over before we are treated to the magnificent and extraordinarily resonant bass-baritone voice of Eddie Mulliaumaseali’i and then to a gorgeous performance by Christina O’Neill.

There were a few moments when the script fell into easy character clichés, and there were missed opportunities to tell a deeper story about the lives of the residents through the libretto. One song, The Story of My Life, summarises their lives, but putting them all into a single number felt cursory and truncated. Despite the admirable character work by all the performers, only Evelyn Krape’s character, Rose, is fleshed out.

Musical Director, Lucy Bermingham worked her magic over her small, tight band, which was strangely tucked behind a scrim at the back of the stage. The sound boomed a little at the start, but this venue has sound issues, and it is to their credit that this was resolved.

It is easy to underestimate how extremely difficult it is to write and produce a successful new musical. Full kudos to this team – director, writer, composer, choreographer, band and marvellous performers for pulling it off with such love and tremendous energy. And kudos for tackling a timely theme. Many of us are dealing with the complicated matters of moving elderly parents into residential care, or, indeed, others are facing the proposition of entering a home/organising home care for themselves.

Premiering last year at the Melbourne Theatre Company, Bloom played to sold-out performances, and it deserves the same level of support here in Sydney.