The struggle to establish the Australian musical as a viable, successful artform has sometimes been seen as akin to the search for the Holy Grail. But as Peter Pinne and Peter Wyllie Johnston show in their rigorously researched book, The Australian Musical: From the Beginning, numerous talented enthusiasts have thrown blood, sweat and tears into writing and staging hundreds of Australian musicals over the course of the last 100 years. While umpteen shows have come and gone with barely a trace, others have enjoyed considerable success.
It’s a colourful history with more disappointments than triumphs, but the success of early musicals such as Collits’ Inn in 1932, followed by The Highwayman in 1950, The Sentimental Bloke in 1961, and more recent productions including Keating!, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Boy From Oz, The Sapphires, Bran Nue Dae, and Muriel’s Wedding shows that Australians do love a good Australian musical, and that the genre is finally finding its feet.
As Johnston writes in the book: “The story of the Australian men and women who wrote musicals throughout the twentieth century and created an explosion of musical theatre creativity in...
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So fabulous to finally have this book. As former Curator of Music at the National Library, I can testify to the years of Research undertaken by these two authors and the contribution they have made to finding and collecting scores and scripts for the Libary’s wonderful national collection of music. Also honours previous work undertaken by John Thomson and Richard Stone. Thanks to the two Peters for bringing all this work and collections into a public narrative. It’s an important but little known story in Australian musical culture. See also Peter Pinne’s Collection of Sheet Music from the Musicals. A remarkable international collection.