By Michael Ruffles
There are two musicals opening in Melbourne this June. One is a multi-million dollar production of a world-wide hit that features witches. The other is being put together on a budget that extends only as far as a few credit card limits and features a bunch of five year olds. And their dog.
But a night out to You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown will cost you about half the price of tickets to Wicked, and the added benefit is some of Ballarat’s finest young talent will be on display.
Director Bryce Ives, who has set up the company Melbourne Musicals, actors Laura Burzacott and Richard Hughes, and stage manager Michael Cooper are all products of the Ballarat theatre scene, and make up nearly half the small cast and crew of Charlie Brown.
The show is a day in the life of Charlie Brown and other beloved characters from the world of Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz – Sally, Lucy, Linus and his blanket, Schroeder and Snoopy are all there. Ives says the show is non-linear, but features all the staples of the comic strips, with a baseball game Charlie successfully loses, Lucy’s psychology stand and Snoopy on his kennel pontificating. The world of the five-year-olds is crayon coloured and bright, with drama and humanity mixed in the comedy, music and dance.
“Really, it’s like a whole heap of comic strips put together into a show,’’ Ives says.
“It like the world from a perspective of a child. It’s very old-fashioned, it’s pre-TV.
“There’s drama in everything, being a five-year-old and having your blanket taken away from you is a rather serious matter. Our challenge is to make these seemingly trivial issues actually have real elements of drama in them, because we want the show to be more than one-dimensional.’’
Ives has been in love with Charlie Brown since hearing the 1998 cast recording, and raved about it to Cooper and Burzacott and other Ballarat theatre stalwarts Constance Coward-Lemke and Andrew Seeary. He says this year the timing was perfect to reunite with Cooper and Burzacott to perform the show, while Hughes, a fourth Ballarat talent, was also cast.
“Quite a few of us have found ourselves back on this journey again, we’ve all gone on our different paths and now we’re back,’’ Ives says.
“It just so happens that everyone was available, but when you are forming your ideal team and your dream team these names came up.’’
Along with full-time work with the ABC, Ives has directed plays in Geelong and Melbourne, while Cooper has spent the past three years in Melbourne working in a school drama department. Burzacott has spent more than four years working hard to break into the Melbourne theatre scene, winning roles in Sweet Charity, The Witches of Eastwick, Rent, and Blood Brothers, among others. She works 38 hours and trains 25 hours a week, and she says that while it gets tiring she is passionate about her craft.
She is also delighted to be playing Sally Brown, and says the six cast members have grown close during the seemingly endless Sunday rehearsals.
“We have become very close, very much in tune with each other,’’ she says.
“It’s going to be fabulous. I love the start, as soon as I hear the overture I love it.’’
Ives and Cooper worked together in various Ballarat productions, and were instrumental in forming Theatre Movement in the 1990s. Working on as many as six shows a year, they would have to balance the money earners with more indulgent and adventurous projects. In Charlie Brown they have a loved Broadway musical that delivers family fun, but with a small enough cast of six to take a few risks.
Cooper, who now works at a Melbourne school and has a wife and young son, says he would not have bothered being the stage manager if Ives was doing a standard show such as My Fair Lady.
“We don’t have to do it just for the money,’’ Cooper says.
Ives says the long-term future for Melbourne Musicals is to perform relatively obscure musicals and to promote new talent and original works.
“We want to bring an Australian voice to musical theatre, the irony is we are doing an American show to begin with,’’ he laughs.
You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown will be performed between Saturday June 7 and Sunday June 15 Cromwell Road Theatre, South Yarra. For bookings visit www.moshtix.com.au or call 1300 GET TIX.
