MERRILY MERRILY

 One of the enjoyable aspects of being in Perth is having access to student productions and performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts. Every musical you see in Australia will have some WAAPA students performing in it and of course some of them have gone on (and will go on) to be famous. So it's a joy to see them with their skills in development on stage. 

Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA 2025

Our most recent excursion to Mt Lawley where WAAPA is currently housed as part of Edith Cowan University was to see a production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along. If you haven't seen it/listened to it, it's the story of three artist friends - a novelist, a librettist and a composer - told backwards. it was initially a failure on Broadway with only 16 performances after opening night. People either couldn't follow the story line or got confused about the characters. We Sondheim experts have never had that problem and thoroughly enjoyed the energy of the WAAPA production.

If you're interested in Sondheim, the ABC Stage Show has done a great series of programs about him. I can claim to have had correspondence with Mr Sondheim! The first artistic director I worked with at MTC, Roger Hodgman, was a Sondheim fan and did a series of wonderful productions of his work - Assassins, A Little Night Music and Into the Woods. When Roger was leaving, I wrote to Sondheim and asked if he would write a personal letter to Roger which he did. I should have kept the covering note I received with the letter because it would probably be worth something these days. 

John O'May & Helen Morse, MTC production of "A Little Night Music' 1997 (photo by Jeff Busby)

Susan and I are heading to Europe (assuming we can get past the conflict in the Middle East) and have, amongst other things, a few days in Oslo. I was browsing the internet to see what's on while we're there and found a production of A Little Night Music at the National Theatre. As my Norwegian is non-existent and it was too hard to try and understand the booking system, I cheekily wrote to the theatre, explained that I'd managed a production of the musical, and asked to buy some house seats. Who knows what the experience will be like but even if we can't understand the words, we'll be able to hum the tunes.

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