If the general conceit of Melbourne Theatre Company’s new musical Bloom sounds familiar – young man comes to live and work in a facility filled with idiosyncratic personalities in order to learn a major life lesson – that’s because it is. Louis Nowra traversed very similar ground with the semi-autobiographical Così, which was set in a mental hospital. This time the setting is an aged care home, but the thematic thrust is the same: the dehumanising effect of institutionalism and the benefits of cross-generational community.
Where Nowra leaned on Mozart’s Così fan tutte for his central motif, Tom Gleisner and Katie Weston have opted for something more ambitious, crafting an original musical that gives almost all its characters a chance to sing. Director Dean Bryant gathers a highly experienced cast of musical theatre talent to round these characters out and to bolster the show’s musical pedigree. It proves a wise choice.
Finn (Slone Sudiro) is a young university student down on his luck and looking for a place to live. He stumbles on the Pine Grove aged care facility, which is offering accommodation in exchange for light care duties: cleaning up a bit, talking to residents. He’s in no way qualified, but facility director Mrs MacIntyre (Anne Edmonds) signs off anyway, to the chagrin of care worker Ruby (Vidya Makan) and the relief of her colleague Gloria (Christina O’Neill).
On the same day Finn moves in, new resident Rose (Evelyn Krape) is admitted; she has been deemed a risk to herself after accidentally setting her bed on fire. She has lived an extraordinary single life, her sense of adventure taking her around the world on her own terms – when people tell her “you never found anyone, I tell them they never found me”, she says. Her confinement functions as a counter-narrative to the lives of the younger characters Finn and Ruby, their potentialities contrasting with her narrowing options. The ways in which these two world views coalesce provide the musical with its emotional heft.
Like Così before it, Bloom gives the actors plenty of opportunities to shine individually without losing the show’s primary purpose, which is to demonstrate community through a powerful ensemble. Moments of private anguish – from Frankie J Holden’s taciturn Doug opening up about his recent stroke, to Eddie Muliaumaseali’i’s silent Sal coming out of his shell – are poignant, but the musical comes to life when the cast perform numbers together.
The best of these, Here at Pine Grove and Grow a Little Older, are both rousing and funny, the kind of songs that bring to mind Sondheim’s group numbers in Company: they simultaneously embrace the cheesiness of high-kicking dance routines and warmly satirise them. As the residents try to convince an inspector they’re living the good life, or perform a choral number in ludicrous flower costumes, the absurdity of aged care living comes close to a kind of rough sublimity. This is a key point of Gleisner’s script: living is still beautiful beyond the bounds of society’s ideas of usefulness.
Performances are excellent. Musical theatre stalwarts like John O’May and Maria Mercedes vitalise relatively minor roles, while the younger performers match them in vocal chops. Makan is a particular standout, belting out a terrific solo in The Best is Yet to Be. Edmonds channels the pantomime villainy of Lynda Gibson’s Matron Dorothy Conniving-Bitch in Let the Blood Run Free rather than the coiled rage of a Nurse Ratched, but she’s often very funny. Best of all is Krape as Rose, the most rounded and fully human part on stage; she’s brassy, shrewd and winning, and her decline is genuinely moving.
Designer Dann Barber has created a highly detailed and convincing set: the general tiredness and grime of aged care seems to emanate from the walls. Charlotte Lane’s costumes are naturalistic yet endearing, and Amelia Lever-Davidson’s lighting is suitably cold and antiseptic. Bryant’s direction is buoyant and energetic throughout, marshalling a mood of vibrancy without sacrificing realism or sadness.
Because, for all its humour, Bloom is dealing with a social problem that’s all too real and crushingly sad. Aged care in Australia is broken, and Gleisner and Weston are responding to the issue with goodwill, if not perhaps the seriousness it deserves. Weston’s songs are effective enough individually, although together they seem more like a musical revue than a fully composed score – there isn’t enough of the intertextuality or development of musical ideas that make some musicals great. Gleisner’s lyrics are serviceable, rather than ingenious.
And yet, the show’s takeout message is powerful and pressing: siloing aged care from the community doesn’t work; corporatisation of the sector is inherently destructive; and the young and the old must find a solution together. Our collective humanity is at stake.
MTC’s production of Bloom is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until 19 August
