How flowerchildren and Magnormos Bloomed
Melbourne Production Company Magnormos is entering its second decade in style, stepping up to stage a season of flowerchildren – the Mamas and Papas story at the Comedy Theatre. David Spicer and Lucy Graham report.
Written by AFI award winner Peter Fitzpatrick, flowerchildren is a musical about late sixties band sensation The Mamas and The Papas. It has great music and Jersey Boys style off-stage drama including a debilitating love-triangle, drugs, sex, deceit, alcoholism, and chronic over-eating.
Director Aaron Joyner says the conflict was out in the open.
“When John Phillips found out his wife was having affair with Denny (another member of the band) he penned a song for Denny called I Saw Her Again Last Night and made him sing it as an act of revenge.”
It’s hard to imagine how any group could survive such tumult.
“They were very co-dependent and encapsulated the hippie era. There was so much tension going on that they were like a bright star which burst. It only lasted four years.”
The show pivots on the music. California Dreamin’, Monday Monday, Words of Love, Creeque Alley, Dedicated to the One I Love, Dream a Little Dream and San Francisco (be sure to wear flowers in your hair) are among the group’s well known hits.
Since its original 2011 production, the flowerchildren script has been tweaked, and, while the intimate setting is being maintained, it has been developed into a fully professional production with the same cast: Casey Donovan as Mama Cass, Laura Fitzpatrick and Mama Michelle, Matt Hetherington as Papa John and Dan Humphris as Papa Denny.
Established in 2002 by Aaron Joyner, Magnormos is an independent musical theatre company with a focus on the work of Australian writers. Aaron has staged new Australian musicals, international works and regular concerts. It’s all been on his ‘credit card’ without one cent of Government funding. The early days were tough. I vividly recall Aaron struggling to pay for a coffee when I met him for a chat (David Spicer paid).
The small start for the company has been a ‘blessing in disguise’, now that it is about to produce a fully professional production in the city with a budget of many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We have had ten years to work out the puzzle. We made our mistakes when we weren’t on the radar. I was forced to be frugal (to survive) and now our investors think we are not paying ourselves enough.”
He is relaxed and positive about the step up in theatre grade. Already the company has had a higher box office gross than for all Magnormos’ productions combined for the last decade.
He is still taking it step by step but is hoping to tour flowerchildren across Australia and New Zealand.
Scratch the surface and Aaron still seethes about his company ‘blessing’ of missing out on every application to every funding body.
“We were not doing commercial work. It was funding-friendly work but just kept getting knocked back. “
The Australia Council came up with hundreds of thousands of dollars for Musical Theatre. Instead it went into other programs in Melbourne and Sydney which involved workshops and performances of new work.
“Some bright sparks pushed us aside to create a job for themselves. Those have now fallen apart and incredible amounts of money have been wasted,” Aaron Joyner asserts. “We really could have used funding in those days. They knew what we were doing but chose to give it elsewhere.”
While those other initiatives disappeared as soon as the Government funding ran out Magnormos keeps marching forward.
In September this year it will present a musical triptych at the Melbourne Recital Centre, celebrating the work of Broadway’s Stephen Schwartz, also the company’s international patron. He is flying out for the occasion.
Each of the three musicals will be presented on one night, one week apart, beginning with Godspell on Monday 9th September, Pippin on the 16th, and the third show, yet to be announced, on the 23rd.
A balance of Australian and international work is the key to its success.
“flowerchildren is the story of an American Band, but the writer and the director (me) are Australian.
“I would not even put it on my website Australian.musicals.com.
“But doing this type of international work has allowed us to grow. It gets us another step towards staging Australian musicals at a commercial level.”
flowerchildren – the Mamas and Papas story plays at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre from May 18 until June 16, 2013.
Interview with Producer Margaret Fisk
Originally published in the May / June 2013 edition of Stage Whispers
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