When Tom Gleisner decided to write his first musical comedy, Bloom, he had little idea of the constraints of stage.
“I think the original cast of the show was about 32,” he says, sitting beside sparkling harbour waters at Sydney Theatre Company in Walsh Bay. “I had to be tapped on the shoulder and told, ‘That’s not happening’.”
After slowly working the cast down to 10, his steep learning curve continued.
Vidya Makan plays a beleaguered aged care worker opposite Christie Whelan Browne’s scheming proprietor in Bloom.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
“In the original script, I was writing things like, ‘we cut to a bedroom’, ‘we cut to the rooftop’, ‘we cut back to’,” Gleisner says. “And again, I had to be taken aside and told that you don’t ‘cut to’ on the stage.
“You wheel in a very heavy and expensive piece of scenery while the audience waits.
“So, a lot of that really basic stuff, I had to sort of learn.
“That said, the fundamentals – good story, good characters, humour – that doesn’t change.”
Such fundamentals are tried and true with Gleisner, co-founder of Working Dog and a prolific writer, director, performer and presenter whose nearly four-decade career ranges from sketch comedy shows (The D-Generation and The Late Show) to panel shows (Have You Been Paying Attention?, The Cheap Seats), cult favourite films (The Castle and The Dish) and TV shows (Frontline and Utopia).
But Gleisner’s Bloom, which debuted in 2023 for Melbourne Theatre Company and achieved sell-out houses, is unusual for its subject.
Set in a nursing home called Pine Grove Aged Care, it follows the facility’s residents banding together with an initially less-than-enthusiastic university student helper given free board in return for caring work to fight cuts enacted by the home’s greedy scheming owner, Mrs MacIntyre.
Christie Whelan Browne (seated) with (from left) Christina O’Neil, Vidya Makan, Maria Mercedes, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, Evelyn Krape, Jackie Rees, Slone Sudiro and John O’May.Credit: Charlie Kinross
With music by Kate Weston, the cast is led by Christie Whelan Browne (Muriel’s Wedding: the Musical), John Waters (Talk) and returning cast members Evelyn Krape, Vidya Makan, Maria Mercedes, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, John O’May, Christina O’Neill, Jackie Rees and Slone Sudiro.
Gleisner’s decision to write a musical set in an aged care facility came from personal experience.
“When I started writing Bloom I had spent a fair bit of time in and around aged care,” he says. “My father and both parents-in-law were there, and I was getting to know the world.
“Then I read a newspaper article about a nursing home in the Netherlands which was offering free board to students who are willing to come in and work as carers.
Evelyn Krape and Slone Sudiro, who plays the reluctant student worker. Credit: Charlie Kinross
“I thought that was an interesting story. At this stage, it wasn’t a musical. I don’t know what it was. I was probably thinking it might be a TV series because that’s just where I’d come from. Or a movie.”
Gleisner can’t pinpoint when Bloom became musical theatre, but he can attest to a decades-long love of the genre.
“For some people, it’s their idea of hell,” he says. “And it’s curiously gendered.
“As a broad generalisation, guys find musicals hard work. I think part of our logical brain goes, ‘But why would you be singing?’
“I’m an ally. I adore musicals. To the point where, if I go to a play, I get this curious moment about 10 minutes in, a sudden wave of disappointment, where I go, ‘Oh, no one’s going to sing!’ ”
Gleisner knew selling Bloom would be challenging.
“Commercial producers, as I am led to understand, are far more likely to take a chance on a West End, Tony Award-winning smash hit,” he says. “Audiences just feel safe right up front.
“A new Australian musical? That’s already a high bar. A new Australian musical set almost entirely in an aged care home? ‘Well, thanks Tom, that sounds great. Where do I book?’ ”
He says what shaped it from idea to show was working with subsidised theatre companies – Melbourne Theatre Company, and now Sydney Theatre Company – and the talents of singer and composer Katie Weston and director Dean Bryant.
He also found it unusual, as the writer, to be offered feedback by the cast in Bloom’s initial five-week rehearsal period.
“For about five minutes I took affront,” he says. “‘Hang on, I’m the writer.’ But then I suddenly realised that the wisdom and experience they were bringing was quite extraordinary.
“I let my ego go, I made copious amendments and tweaks and improvements and cuts, and, by the end of that first week of rehearsals, the show was very different.”
Vidya Makan, who plays Pine Grove care worker Ruby, says Bloom balances the realities of life in a care home with an astute, and heart-warming, understanding of humans.
“When you look at it on paper, you think, ‘How can this exist as a musical?’,” she says. “But when you see it, and be part of it, it feels absolutely right.
“Funny is the operative word.”
Cast in the Melbourne and Sydney seasons, Makan remains enamoured with Bloom’s older cast members, legends of stage and musical theatre including Krape, O’May, Waters and Rees.
“They’re playing these elderly people, but they’re pulling out a dance number and a big belty song, and it’s thrilling to watch,” Makan says. “The relationships formed between my character, who is in her early 20s, and these characters who are in their 70s and 80s – along with the sharing of knowledge that happens throughout the piece – it’s something really beautiful.”
Actor and singer Christie Whelan Browne, whose career spans theatre, musicals and TV shows, is also revelling in her co-stars’ talents.
“We’ll be rehearsing, having so much fun, and then it hits me who I’m working with,” she says. “These [older cast members] each have 50-plus years of experience in this industry. Just being there with them is a masterclass.”
As Mrs MacIntyre, the scheming owner of Pine Grove, Whelan Browne takes on a role first played by comedian and actor Anne Edmonds in the show’s premiere Melbourne season.
“It’s hard to fill someone else’s shoes, and especially Anne, who is such a comedic genius,” she says. “But I had a little break from rehearsals last week and I made the decision to make it my own thing.
“It’s the only way to do it. So I’m trying to shed the ghost of Anne Edmonds.
“And I’ve worked with Dean for so many years now. It’s like coming back to a part of myself that I haven’t been with since I had a child.
“It’s just thrilling.”
Within Bloom’s humour, musical numbers and dance routines, the show doesn’t shy away from mortality.
“There is a sad element towards the end of the show, where we’re caring for someone as they are spending their last few days,” Makan says. “I won’t give any spoilers.
“But that actually comes as a bit of a surprise because we have so much fun.
“Rather than the show being a sad memorial, it’s really a celebration of life.
“Like all my favourite shows, Bloom will make you laugh, make you have a really great time and then, when you walk out, you’re feeling quite moved.”
And even though this is Gleisner’s first foray into musical theatre, Makan and Whelan Browne perceive no novice vibes in its iteration.
“He is a comedic genius,” Whelan Browne says. “And it’s obvious this piece has come from somewhere within him that also holds a huge amount of empathy.
“He’s wanting to give power to people who probably feel voiceless.
“For anyone who’s in aged care, or for people who have ageing parents and who are dealing with that pain, there is pain in the show.
“That’s not shied away from.
“But Tom is able to shine a light on those issues, give some power back to the elderly players, and make us laugh and make us cry.
“That’s what theatre is all about.”
Gleisner agrees.
“It’s not a TED talk,” he says. “It’s not a submission to the royal commission.
“It’s a funny, warm, uplifting show.
“Of course I want people to leave the theatre thinking a little bit more deeply about how we treat older people.
“Probably the major goal when I started writing was that the older residents were not going to be the punchline to the joke because, all too often, older actors in plays or TV series are wheeled out as the butt of the comedy.
“In Bloom, the residents are every bit as funny and flawed and vibrant as the younger carers around them … They are defiant.”
Bloom is at Roslyn Packer Theatre, March 29-May 11.
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