Bloom

At the Pine Grove ‘retirement home’ – understaffed, under resourced and run by a ruthless cost-cutter, Mrs MacIntyre (Anne Edmonds) – the inmates – sorry, residents – are frustrated, bored and depressed.  There’s just nothing to do, the food is terrible, cleaning and maintenance are minimal, and the carers, Gloria (Christina O’Neill) and newbie Ruby (Vidya Makan) really care and are always struggling to keep up.  But, as the company sings in the first big musical number, they’ve ‘Nowhere Else to Go’. 

Into the mix come fiery old Rose (always wonderful Evelyn Krape), ex-teacher, dragooned into the place because ‘they’ say she can’t look after herself any more, and self-centred millennial music student Finn (Slone Sudiro) under a scheme where he gets free board if he helps out with the residents.  Rose is from the start an outspoken one-woman ginger group while slacker Finn soon clashes with carer Ruby.  His first song, ‘I Just Need a Break’ keys us into his ingrained, oblivious sense of entitlement – out of which, of course, he will need to be shaken, mainly by Rose… and carer Ruby.

In addition, there’s faded but still sexy Lesley (Jackie Rees), an artist, 82-year-old salt-of-the-earth Doug (Frankie J Holden), who’s had a stroke and is too shy to tell Lesley he’s got the hots for her, kleptomaniac Betty (Maria Mercedes), who rides around on a motorised mobility aid chair, fruity, dapper Roland (John O’May), ex-thespian who ‘never works with amateurs’, and hulking Salvatore (Eddie Mulianmaseali’l) who never speaks and seems lost in his own interior world.  As for Anne Edmonds, her brutal, heartless, lying Mrs MacIntyre just about steals the show – she’s a great physical as well as verbal comedian.

One of the great pleasures of Bloom is to see these troupers as the residents strut their stuff, everyone one of them with years of experience, great comic timing and the ability to carry a tune.  Indeed, one of Tom Gleisner’s purposes was to put these people on stage – and not as ‘background’ or the butt of gags – up against the newer young performers Sudiro, O’Neill and Makan.  Andrew Hallsworth’s choreography is basic, but completely appropriate to the show and these performers: more would have looked just wrong.

Set design is by the always inventive Dann Barber, here giving us a very realistic retirement home common room plus some corridors and bedrooms – and a park.  Charlotte Lane provides some ingenious costume changes – Mercedes plays two roles, and Mulianmaseali’l four) – and character expressive wardrobe for the rest.

Katie Weston’s score is upbeat and bright – if not particularly memorable – but cleverly incorporating Gleisner’s lyrics – which, according to Gleisner’s program note, she had to wrangle to make it all work.  Even in the darker, lyric songs (mostly ballads) the tone is an assertion of hope, of coming through despite the odds.  Curiously, however, the book slides over certain elements - whether in the name of pace or in never letting the show get too dark – or indeed, emotional. 

The process of Finn and Ruby falling for each other is severely elided, going from angry conflict to tender exchanges with no discernible intervening steps.  Most disappointing is where Finn discovers an old accordion and plays a few notes.  To the residents’ surprise – and ours – silent, near comatose Salvatore straightens up and sings.  Maybe it’s corny but it’s so moving – and surely, we expect more of the moment.  An old Italian love song perhaps?  Nope.  Mrs MacIntyre hurtles onto the stage and breaks the moment and the mood.

Tom Gleisner, of course, is part of the Working Dog outfit and across thirty years, they have reliably demonstrated that they know exactly what they’re doing.  That is, they know their varied audiences and how to pitch to each.  Some people say they cannot bear to watch the pointed satire Utopia – or indeed the earlier The Hollowmen – because it has such a ring of truth that it is therefore utterly depressing (although very funny).  But these are the same people who created The Castle – which has become a classic (numerous lines of dialogue have gone into the vernacular) and elegiac The Dish that sneaks up on you with its warm, gentle tone.

Bloom, by contrast, is a musical - positive, upbeat and suggesting a way forward.  The way forward may be rather obvious but no less true.  In his writer’s notes, Tom Gleisner more or less acknowledges that the show could have gone darker and deeper – Royal Commission level – ‘but that would have been another show.’  So, no kerosene baths, bedsores, malnutrition, over sedation or sexual assault.  The residents’ lives aren’t that bad. Bloom isn’t One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (although Mrs MacIntyre is a mild echo of Nurse Ratchet), it’s more Louis Nowra’s Cosi where an unwilling young fellow acts as a catalyst and brings the residents together.  It’s feel-good entertainment in a genre elusively hard to make work – but this works.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Pia Johnson