By Hannah Story
As COVID-19 spread across Sydney at the start of 2020, playwright and composer Laura Murphy found herself thinking about the zombie apocalypse.
“I think at least half of us, for a split second, thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be f---ing crazy if everybody that got the virus all of a sudden turned into zombies, and it actually becomes one of those zombie apocalypse films?’” she says. “I certainly thought that.”
Laura Murphy’s latest production is Zombie! The Musical.Credit: Louise Kennerley
That split-second thought was the genesis of Murphy’s latest show, Zombie! The Musical, which opens at Hayes Theatre this week. Set in 1999, it tells the story of a community theatre troupe who discovers the zombie apocalypse has started just outside their stage door.
“[During the pandemic] we were confronted with the reality that musical theatre is not an essential service,” Murphy says.
“I wanted to create a world where perhaps what musical theatre can do – which is having a character sing their inner voice and their inner thoughts and feelings – is a little more fundamental to our humanity, and may be the difference between the eradication of humankind or its survival.”
The pandemic motivated Murphy to dive into all her unfinished projects. “I became a workaholic, basically,” she says.
The Lovers starred Natalie Abbott, Blake Appelqvist, Monique Sallé, Brittanie Shipway and Jerrod Smith.Credit: Bell Shakespeare
Not only did she start working on Zombie! but she finished writing The Lovers for Bell Shakespeare, a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that opened in 2022, and returned to the music and lyrics for The Dismissal, a musical about the demise of the Whitlam government, which premiered in 2023.
Those two shows cemented Murphy as a rising star of Australian musical theatre and part of a wave of young women theatre-makers shaking up the local scene, including Yve Blake (Fangirls), Hannah Reilly (The Deb), Jules Orcullo (Forgetting Tim Minchin), Brittanie Shipway and Gillian Cosgriff.
Their musicals tell distinctly Australian stories and stand in stark contrast to the international blockbusters and jukebox musicals that dominate Australian stages.
“We want to make this repertoire of new Australian musicals, new Australian stories to be added to the mosaic of our Australian cultural identity with all the other art forms,” Murphy says.
Fangirls has had a number of return seasons, including a transfer from Belvoir to the Sydney Opera House.Credit: Brett Boardman
She notes that Australian musical theatre is in its infancy compared to more than a century of musicals on Broadway: “It does feel like this is new, and we’re sort of entering something and working it out as we go along.”
The success of recent musicals, including Muriel’s Wedding the Musical, Fangirls and The Lovers, prove local audiences have an appetite for Australian stories.
“It’s such a huge investment to put money into a musical, you need so many resources,” Murphy says. “I think [producers] realised there is an audience for it, there is a hunger for it.”
But a thriving Australian musical scene in Australia requires more than money for developing new work. It needs to invite new audiences into the theatre.
Murphy thinks she has been successful in engaging younger audiences by incorporating more pop music into her shows, which often embrace a range of genres, including pop, punk, jazz, Latin and alt-rock.
“My authentic inner voice is pop,” she says. “Because of that, I’ve certainly seen young people responding to my work and falling in love with theatre and musicals and then falling in love with other things, like politics and Shakespeare.”
Murphy herself is still in love with musicals but feels that thanks to the pandemic, she now has a healthier relationship to her career.
“When you’re in it, it is life or death: it is searching for that next gig and feeling like you don’t have any purpose when you’re between shows,” says Murphy.
“I think a lot of people in the industry now prioritise work-life balance a little more … It’s dress-ups. It’s story time. And while I take it extremely seriously and dedicate all of my time to it, I won’t die if I never do it again.”
Zombie! The Musical is at Hayes Theatre from March 8 to April 6.