Roslyn Packer Theatre, April 2
6/10
Like some of the residents in the Pine Grove Aged Care Centre, Bloom can be a bit lame. Handed caricatures rather than characters, the actors sometimes grasp after laughs, rather than trusting material that’s punctuated with genuinely funny lines. I’ve seen this phenomenon in comedy before, but not usually from people of this calibre: familiarity breeds doubt in the jokes, and everyone starts trying too hard to compensate, when what was really required was a lighter touch from all concerned.
It’s rather odd, because, Bloom, a new Australian musical that premiered for Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023, boasts some considerable talents. Tom Gleisner, long established among our top comedy writers – in film, think The Castle and The Dish; on TV, Utopia and the timeless Frontline – here makes his first splash in the musical theatre pond, with music by Katie Weston. Then there’s Dean Bryant, one of our finest directors of musicals, and actors including John Waters, Christie Whelan Browne, John O’May and Jackie Rees.
The story concerns the tyrannical Mrs McIntyre (Whelan Browne) running Pine Grove to gouge profits against her residents’ wellbeing. She finds an unqualified student, Finn (Slone Sudiro), to enjoy free board in return for helping share the care. He becomes chummy with rebellious new resident Rose (Evelyn Krape), and from there we meet the rest of the tribe, their carers and their quirks.
But the story can seem stuck in a spiral, like the residents’ lives. Rather than being heavy-handed with types, Gleisner could have brought his usual deftness to three-dimensional characters – a flaw magnified at every turn. Weston’s music is routinely so busy that main area of conflict is not in the plot, it’s between the words and the music. Weston opted for pop songs, and Zara Stanton has orchestrated them for a sextet led by Lucy Birmingham, when had they just been played by say, a piano, bass and clarinet, they might have achieved some buoyancy and possibly even pathos as a counterpoint to the comedy. When the songs do try to be deep and meaningful, they merely become mawkish.
Easily the best is The Story of My Life, in which each resident gives us a snapshot of their rich pasts, contrasting with their current hollowed-out existences, and which also gives us a reminder of Rees’ lustrous voice, as she plays Lesley, an artist who has the hots for Waters’ tongue-tied Doug.
Then there are exquisite little cameos, as when Rose tries to give Finn, a music student, some idea of the point of music, beyond getting the notes in the right order. And Gleisner being Gleisner, gags abound, as when the aged care inspector (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i) arrives, and McIntyre hisses to her staff, “Look caring!”
Finally, there’s the poignancy that the music misses. “Do you know what the hardest part about being in this place is?” Doug asks Finn. “No one needs you.”
Until May 11.