Irish courtesan Lola Montez danced into history and became an Australian musical
SHE was an Irish courtesan who became a Spanish dancer on the Australian goldfields, the perfect fodder for a great Australian musical.
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SHE was an Irish courtesan who won the love of a Bavarian King — so what was Lola Montez doing as a Spanish dancer in the Victorian goldfields in 1856?
Sixty years ago the theatrical performer’s audacious trip Down Under was encapsulated in one of Australia’s most celebrated musicals, but both Lola and the biographical show have been all but forgotten.
Written by Alan Burke, Peter Stannard and Peter Benjamin in 1958, Lola Montez the Musical was a commercial success, with an original score, including chart-topping hit Saturday Girl.
The muse made the perfect protagonist for an Australian musical with international appeal.
A femme fatale of the mid-19th century, Lola Montez (born Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in 1821) left her homeland and trained as a dancer in Spain.
After brief trysts with Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas, she made her way to Munich where she infiltrated the aristocracy and became the mistress of King Ludwig I.
Montez’s beauty, influence and charisma was so beguiling, Ludwig bestowed her an estate and named her Countess Marie von Landsfield on August 25, 1847.
But by February 7 the following year, Bavarians revolted against her and her liberal influence, forcing her expulsion from the country and Ludwig’s abdication in 1848.
By 1853 she was in the US and on her third marriage, opening a brothel in Grass Valley, California.
Two years later, divorced again, she set sail for Australia’s gold fields where she entertained miners.
Her infamous, erotic “spider dance” was met with rapturous encores by the diggers, who threw nuggets of gold at her from the audience.
Her trip to Ballarat, however, earned her the most notoriety, after it was reported she attacked The Ballarat Times editor Henry Seekamp with a whip after he gave her a bad review.
Lola Montez the Musical tells the story of her whirlwind golden tour.
In the 1950s theatre director Burke heard Lola’s story and decided it would make a great musical. An exotic, yet very Australian story it would make a welcome change from the Broadway imports then dominating the stage.
With the help of composer Peter Stannard, Burke wrote the show in 1957. It debuted in February 1958 in a small production by the Union Theatre Repertory Company in Melbourne starring Justine Rettick as Lola. The Elizabethan Theatre Trust agreed to fund a bigger production, which premiered in Sydey in November 1958 starring Mary Preston. Billed as a “gay, virile Australian musical”, it was well received by reviewers.
The show toured the country and even warranted a 90-minute ABC TV special spin-off two years later.
Burke said, however, that the show lost money and “was loved by very few people but it went into legend”.
Acclaimed theatre director Stephen Helper has revived the long lost musical for one night only this Saturday at The Parramatta Theatre.
“What I really love about this show is that it really owns its Australianism,” Helper says.
“It’s unabashedly and gloriously so.”
He said the return was not only well timed with its anniversary, but a poignant counterpart to the current Me Too movement.
“It’s quite modern with a strong female character, a woman who takes no prisoners, who is a defiant and refuses to compromise herself,” he explains.
Helper says he was lucky to work with Stannard on revitalising the show before the original composer passed away earlier this year.
“I think there was a feeling among the authors that as good as it was, it needed to be improved,” Helper says.
“We strengthened the storyline for Lola, refined the dialogue and modernised it. We streamlined it and made it more punchy to really throw the spotlight on Lola.”
Stannard also wrote a new song for the musical.
He said her character would resonate with a new generation of Australians.
“You think about how women were decorations … they were stifled in so many ways. Yet here you’ve got Lola Montez saying ‘I’m having none of that’.”
The musical also examines the vulnerability of the woman and the cost she paid for being so forthright in a man’s world Helper says.
Due to the cost of staging a full production, it has been billed for one night only, but Helper hopes its return will reignite the country’s love for the music.
An all-star cast including Debora Krizac, Scott Irwin, Joel Granger Stefanie Jones, Peter Cousens and Red Symons will bring the production to life this Saturday.
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