Big Name, No Blankets

Big, bold and loud – an apt description for both the Warumpi Band and this musical that tells their story. Brought to the stage after nearly six years of development, this is a tremendous production that is part storytelling and part rock concert, which has Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s Theatre captivated one minute and on their feet the next.

The musical celebrates the journey of Australian music icons Warumpi Band from their origins beating a flour drum in their home town of Papunya in the 1970s, to touring the world as the first rock band to sing in Aboriginal languages. They had three studio albums (first signed to Midnight Oil’s Powderworks label) and huge success in their music and raising awareness of land rights and reconciliation.

One of the founding members of the band, Sammy Tjapanangka Butcher, is part of the creative team and his sons and other family members play in the band and act on stage. The actors and musicians are universally brilliant, bringing authenticity and incredible energy to the stage. You cannot help but stomp your feet and sing along to ‘Stomping Ground’, or listen out for every word of the story told in ‘Fitzroy Crossing’, which is elegantly sung as if being written impromptu by the band on their tour of North Western Australia.

Baykali Ganambarr is Sammy, who guides the main story from its origins, and there are clever sequences of how each member came to join the group with no name – it was given to them by others recognising them in the bush and saying ‘You’re that Warumpi Band?’, named after the Luritja word ‘warumpinya’, which means ‘honey-ant dreaming site’, the insects being common around the group’s home town.

Jack Hickey and Corey Saylor-Brunskill play Gordon and Brian, the other two Butcher brothers, whilst Jackson Peele is Neil, the whitefella in the group who has a guitar, an amp, and a motor car. Yet despite the incredible energy and life from these four, it’s exponentially increased with the addition of brother-in-law George, played so vivaciously by Taj Pikram. His power to command the stage and bring the crowd with him with every breath is incredible and his voice will stand-up the hairs on the back of your neck. Pikram drives the rock concert elements of this so convincingly, it’s infectious. When it’s all pulled together with the wonderful backing band of two Butcher sons (Jason on lead guitar and Jeremiah on drums and keyboard), Gary Watling (guitar) and Malcolm Beveridge (bass), it’s a terrific roof-lifting sound that is euphoric and momentous.

Supporting the men is the wonderful Cassandra Williams, who plays all the female roles, including the mother of the Butcher boys. Williams shapes her roles so well, defining the Butcher matriarch around the fire, then becoming a sassy young woman telling Neil she’s meeting him after the gig.

The set from Emily Barrie is a simple firepit and tin-roof tent on stage right, with the centre stage dominated by an arched lighting rig, beneath which sit the band. Other props are minimal – concert packing cases become a mountain to climb or a boat to sail – the locations are defined by the dialogue and the music. The background is a huge video projection, brilliantly designed by Sean Bacon and animated by Patricia McKean and Guck. Starting with First Nations art of the honey-ant, there are images of country, of wide dirt roads, of Sydney and cold Melbourne (in this story, the musical’s name and band’s first album title was named after their experience in the colder climate of Victoria’s capital).

But it’s the story that strides confidently from start to finish, emphasising the importance of music, the ability to achieve great things (Sammy realising he has the opportunity to play alongside one of his guitarist heroes is particularly touching) – but more than that, the importance and vitalness of family and home. The success of the band depends on their unity as a family, and falls apart when they realise that other family need them back home.

It’s also a great story of Aboriginal music at a time when First Nations rights, both civil and land, were getting mainstream attention, and the heady days of the mid 1980s saw their widespread adoption as champions of Australian music in the cities as much as in country. This is a timely and hard-hitting response to the world’s current shift to self – this musical theatre reminds us, insists to us, that community is more important than ever.

Review by Mark Wickett

Photographer: James Henry

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