Joh for PM: Queensland’s Bjelke-Petersen at heart of new musical

The reign of notorious Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen is being revived in a new musical.

Actors Colin Lane and Barb Lowling with director Kris Stewart. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

No one plays politics like a Queenslander. Kevin Rudd made it all the way to the Lodge, only to try to take over the UN after being kicked out of Canberra. Pauline Hanson is still stoking outrage, 21 years after the maiden speech that made her a household name. The state continues to bless the nation’s politics with characters stranger than fiction, from Bob Katter and Paul Pisasale to Clive Palmer and Glenn Lazarus — even Mal Meninga, however fleetingly that one lasted.

But it’s hard to find anyone who comes close, in terms of impact or notoriety, to Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

The former peanut farmer from Kingaroy served as premier from 1968 to 1987, leaving office two years after his ill-fated run for the top job in Canberra. In the end, the Fitzgerald inquiry exposed a legacy of corruption under his watch that forever changed the complexion of politics in the state.

Joh Bjelke-Petersen in his political heyday.

Much has changed, of course, in the three decades since Bjelke-Petersen left the political stage. It’s now 12 years on from his death, and he still divides opinion. While some may remember an economic boom time that filled the sky with cranes, others look back and cringe. In 2003, Labor loyalists watched in disbelief when Peter Beattie, then Queensland premier, gave the wheelchair-bound Bjelke-Petersen a chirpy personal tour of the new Suncorp Stadium in front of the media.

How, then, will Queenslanders respond to the sound of a new musical that makes light of the Joh era? The director, Kris Stewart, is well aware he’s dealing with a topic of great sensitivity.

“The show has a fondness for the Queensland we were,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you can’t look at that and realise there are some things we’re glad have changed. But I think it’s naive to not be able to look to your past to acknowledge what it was and be glad to see the city has changed and grown from those things.”

The show is called Joh for PM and it’s one of the centrepieces of the Queensland Music Festival, which opens next month. Playing the former premier is Colin Lane, best known as one-half of comedy duo Lano and Woodley. Lane’s challenge, according to Stewart, is to convey a character at once blustering and ambitious, out of his depth and likeable, too.

The action is framed around a campaign launch, complete with brown paper bags for donations, as Bjelke-Petersen sets off to take over from Bob Hawke and become prime minister. The story covers his childhood, introduction to politics and ascent to power, that ill-fated pursuit of federal politics, then his resignation from office under the cloud of the Fitzgerald inquiry. Familiar themes abound (death duties, Springboks, gerrymanders, the white shoe brigade) while many of the people involved at various stages of his life story make an appearance on stage or in song: Allen Callaghan, Russ Hinze, Chris Masters, Tony Fitzgerald and so on.

Flo, Bjelke-Petersen’s wife, is there too, along with her famous pumpkin scones. (She’s played by Barb Lowling.) The show makes merry use of Sir Joh’s idiosyncratic use of English, too. And, yes, this includes some of his best known sayings such as “Don’t you worry about that”, and “feeding the chooks”.

Bjelke-Petersen may have mangled his words but Stewart says he translates surprisingly well to song. These songs are full of lyrics that poke fun at the man and the state itself. For example: Who’s this man? This fateful friend? Who’s this strange enigma? Who’s this man who’s let us bend bananas without a stigma? Or this: It’s cause of him that Queensland rocks, though his methods are unorthodox. It’s Joh! Joh! Joh!

Or this: At the start I was scared. I was terrified. I had no clue how to keep all the press onside. Back then I found it very hard and they gave me funny looks. Now I find it just as easy as feeding the chooks.

The show is irreverent, to be sure, but Stewart is careful to point out it’s not a sketch comedy.

“It’s not about taking the piss,” he says. “It’s not about taking the piss out of the 80s either. I think there’s a lot of cheap comedy you could potentially do this with but our intention is not to throw an impersonator on stage and do a ­Leagues Club stand-up on Joh and that period in Queensland history because I think that actually under­estimates how significant that time was. And I don’t see my place in this as kind of an arbiter of what the truth is around Joh.”

The project has enjoyed relatively quick progress from the page to the stage. It began about three years ago, when Stewart, the artistic director of Powerhouse, received Australia Council funding for a new musical. Its working title was The Valley Burns, and the show was to be set in Brisbane in the late 1970s and 80s. (Fortitude Valley, of course, was the focal point for police corruption and vice during those days.)

Various writers came on board to help, including musician Ed Kuepper and Brisbane journalist Matt Condon. But something wasn’t working. They tried various drafts, and approached it from different angles — was it true crime or something else? — but the magic they wanted was lacking.

“We just found it hard to crack,” Stewart says. “We knew the subject was really delicious, this idea of Brisbane getting bigger and bigger, how it couldn’t really be a country town with its corruption hidden in the shadows any longer. It’s just a fascinating time in Brisbane history, from the late 70s through to the Commonwealth Games and Expo. It’s an exciting period.”

Meanwhile, Jute Theatre in Cairns was looking for partners for a project it had in development, a cabaret based on the life of Bjelke-Petersen. Brisbane playwright Stephen Carleton, whose credits includes The Turquoise Elephant at Griffin Theatre, was already on board.

The Powerhouse agreed to help out, and Stewart put Carleton together with Paul Hodge, a composer best known for his work on Clinton: The Musical, whichtravelled from Edinburgh to off-Broadway to Perth.

With Carleton and Hodge, the new project quickly began to take shape. A story that had been proving elusive rapidly arranged itself around the character of Sir Joh. As Stewart says: “We worked through The Valley Burns and found Joh for PM.”

Joh Bjelke-Petersen with premier Peter Beattie and wife Flo in 2003.

Stewart says there’s a central tension that drives the narrative: “Did we need Joh Bjelke-Petersen in order to become the Brisbane we are today?” In other words, did the end justify the means? Stewart acknowledges the legacy of corruption but says much of the activity nevertheless contributed to the growth of Brisbane into a major modern city. And the period itself, of course, offers no shortage of narrative potential.

“I think history is apolitical,” he says. “The time is the time. The people’s actions are their actions. We’re not trying to rewrite history. We’re not trying to make him better or worse. We’re just trying to speak about that time and be truthful about it and also find the humanity and comedy and fun and the music that exists within it. It doesn’t really matter what your opinion of Joh was, I think you’ll hopefully find your version of him in this show.”

After Brisbane, the musical will move north to Cairns, since it’s a co-production with Jute Theatre. From that point, the producers hope to take it on tour across Queensland next year, then possibly interstate as well.

“I don’t think only the people of Puerto Rico and New York are interested in Alexander Hamilton,” Stewart says, referring to the wildly successful Broadway show and the heritage of its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. “Hopefully it’s not just the people of Brisbane and Kingaroy who are interested in the life of Joh.

“If the show is strong enough, it’s something that can translate outside of here. We’re trying to make it so that it’s funny, that there’s something universal about it, which is more important than the quirks of regional politics.”

Joh for PM opens at the Brisbane Powerhouse on July 7.