Musicals To My Ears

In his show The Road I Took, which he is currently touring around Australia, Phillip Quast recalls his father playing songs from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma on the record player when he was a boy growing up in Tamworth in northern New South Wales. His father’s taste in musical theatre and the proximity to Australia’s premiere annual country music festival shaped his early taste in music. Since then, via an impressive television, film and theatre career, Quast’s taste has continued to grow. Throughout the years he’s turned his hand and vocal chords to Stephen Sondheim, Marsha Norman, Frank Loesser and The Wiggles among others - numbers by all of whom are featured in The Road I Took. And apart from his assumption that we would all know the lyrics to and willingly collude in a performance of Wiggly Woo, Quast provided a very pleasurable evening for this audience member.

Screen shot of poster for the Albury show 27 November 2025 (source: https://allevents.in/albury)

Musical theatre did not feature prominently in my English childhood and country music not at all.  As I’ve mentioned before, my parents had LPs of Sammy Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra. Dad would sometimes emulate the latter – the image of him crooning in the kitchen comes to mind. Mum also had the Rex Harrison - Julie Andrews recording of My Fair Lady with a wonderful cover design featuring GB Shaw and those two performers in a cascading string puppet design.  She would wistfully join in with The Street Where You Live often while ironing I recall. I don’t remember them having any other records.   Our main listening was the pirate radio station Radio Luxembourg, on a worn blue vinyl covered transistor radio that Dad would carry from workshop to house with him.

The LP with the clever cover that Mum had

My exposure to musical theatre was negligible as if ever a musical came on television our father would deride the male cast members as ‘dancing poons’ and point out that in real life people did not burst into song at the drop of a hat. A little more tolerant, Mum nevertheless favoured naturalism in her musicals so anything featuring Ethel Merman or Eddie Cantor would have been right out. Our grandmother took  us to see Mary Poppins which I enjoyed despite its major departure from the P L Travers books (see Saving Mr Banks). I was particularly moved by Feed the Birds not realising until much later on a visit to London that the romanticized pigeons roosting around St Paul’s were deemed public nuisances. A sign we saw instructing the public not to feed them had been modified thus:

Feeding the  birds/Tories discouraged despite Disney's urging

The first musical I fully embraced was Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, the Joshua Logan 1967 film version. I saw it with my mother and her delight was contagious. We were both genuinely swept away by the charisma of the leads: Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero - all photographed most aesthetically in a movie that has been criticized for the anachronistic beauty if of its settings. I have seen it several times over the years and admit to excusing all its exaggerations and cosmetic flourishes. My companion at Quast’s show was talented Wagga actor, Diana Lovett who was joining him for a workshop on the following two days  and for which she had had to prepare two songs. We are of an age and she chuckled mischievously when telling me that one of the songs she’d selected was The Simple Joys of Maidenhood from Camelot. When I mentioned my affection for the film she poo-pooed it comparing it unfavorably to Broadway and West End productions she’d seen with Richard Harris but with other Guineveres and Lancelots. Divergent as our views were on Ms Redgrave’s casting we were united in our non-compliance with the Wiggly Woo gambit.

Movie poster for Camelot (1967) - full lush art nouveau revival style

My tastes differs too from those of my much missed dear friend Monica. Not knowing she couldn’t stand Sondheim I once included her in group booking to see Sweeney Todd.  Her good manners prevented her from declining. On the other side of the ledger I have her to thank for seeing Man of La Mancha and Les Mis because her twin nephews were in productions. That is genuine appreciation. I don’t know that I would have seen and enjoyed them otherwise.

I escaped from the childhood restrictions on my movie musical enjoyment when I moved in with my boyfriend and his actor friend in the 1970s. It was an era when Hollywood classics were screened into the small hours and we enjoyed countless black and white Busby Berkeley and Astaire and Rogers movies as well as less revered films like the 1952 vehicle for Virginia Mayo and Ronald Reagan She’s Working Her Way Through College  - a simple tale of a burlesque dancer who enrolls in tertiary study. The lyrics of the title song have entered the family canon:

She’s working her way through college

To get a lot of knowledge

That she’ll probably never ever use again…

Just a sample of the useful gender theories the film airs.

Films like this are undoubtedly the reason why some people abhor musicals

While I can’t say I’ve  become a die-hard devotee of the genre I’ve seen a few musicals  over the years and even feel that my father tolerated me watching The Pyjama Game while I was staying with him, but that might be a false memory spawned by wishful thinking. Initially sharing my mother’s preference for more naturalistic forms, (Cabaret was an early and enduring favourite) I now embrace most styles. I recently saw and was entranced by  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - no wonder it is considered a landmark film. I do draw the line at Andrew Lloyd Webber and specifically will not forgive what he did to TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I wasn’t overwhelmed with joy at Tim Minchin’s Matilda when I saw it on stage at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre but do like the movie version.  Locally And Juliet left me bored and annoyed but Mama Mia and Wicked I liked very much. As those who know me will attest, I am picky, picky, picky.

Cuddly bear era - Philip Quast in Play School (source: The Quast Quality blog https://gebo-tqq.blogspot.com/)

Anyway back to Phillip Quast. He is certainly versatile and I suppose I forgive him for peppering his show with nursery favourites as for many he is as identified with Play School as he is with stage musicals. His Javert of course was definitive and oh, that he’d been cast in the film, but then the casting of the movie version of Les Miserables is just that, miserable! Monica’s nephews’ version was infinitely preferable. See, picky, picky, picky…

 

To Sydney to see Betsy

My sister Belinda and I went to Sydney for three days recently. Her main, if not only, objective was to see her daughter who lives in supported accommodation in the Sutherland Shire. Mine was to keep her company, and to catch up with a bereaved friend and my son. Born with hydrocephalus, Belinda’s daughter, Betsy confounded predictions by surviving her first few hours and adjusting to the surgical insertion of a shunt in her head in the following months. In her early years she suffered meningitis and other illnesses that could have killed her but now, at 33 years of age, is doing really well. She has scoliosis, cannot walk and is paralysed on one side. She has limited verbal communication and frighteningly strong upper body strength on her good side. This she flaunts by steering her wheelchair with great vigour to wherever she wants to go and delighting in opening and then slamming shut doors. She also administers powerful pinches and scratches to mostly her mum but occasionally anyone else she interacts with. I have a bruised finger from her attentions as I write this. Belinda has lacerations and bruises up both her arms. Betsy loves music and Belinda brought her a new sound system so she could enjoy some of her favourite songs on USB sticks. Betsy is popular with staff at the house as she is cheerful and expressive rewarding their attention and care.

Belinda and Besty

We were booked into an Air B&B property in Marrickville, another poor choice of mine to add to a growing list. The description on the  website: ‘Stylish Studio + Sunny Patio in Great Location’ is largely true but fails to mention the two steep sets of tiled stairs we had to navigate with our luggage, Belinda’s Jack Russell Terrier and his bedding to reach it. After our 5.5 hour journey we arrived in sweltering heat and had to park illegally, half on the footpath, in the garbage strewn lane behind the building. A roller shuttered locked car port taunted us as we struggled to get through the small security door with our baggage.

So many steps were hard for two sixty something women with hip and knee issues to negotiate and several trips up and down were required before we could move the car and settle in. The apartment itself was clean and comfortable and the adjacent kitchen well supplied with appliances, crockery etc. The vaunted patio was a concrete box behind the building’s Victorian parapet and much too hot to brave until the weather cooled on our last day. However then a brisk breeze caused its unsecured rectangular carpeting to flail about disconcertingly.

The celebrated Marrickville banh mi shop

Marrickville has the advantage of being familiar (we lived in Petersham and then in adjoining Canterbury for over two decades) and offering abundant delicious food options. One highlight for us was feasting on banh mi from the suburb’s original pork roll kiosk where Albo was pictured queueing last election campaign. The value and quality are amazing and put Wagga’s recently opened business purporting to sell the same for almost double the price to shame.

Untested with road trips before, Ryk, Belinda’s dog, acquitted himself beautifully on the journey up and as a guest at the Air B&B. He was similarly calm and well behaved on our drive out to Gymea to see Betsy. Betsy grew up with dogs and delighted in offering them crusts and other morsels from her plate. She hadn’t met Ryk before and didn’t show much interest in him and her now solely liquefied diet precludes offering sneaky treats. Ryk was a hit with support worker Tabitha; she got him a dish of water and let us out into the grassy courtyard where he sniffed the perimeters thoroughly and watered a failing gardenia bush. He and I sat on a vinyl settee and almost dozed off until the strains of John Hamlin and Bonita Collings roused us to join Belinda and Betsy back in her room. As Belinda fed Betsy her pureed chicken teriyaki, we watched her obvious delight at hearing the Playschool hits. It was apt after having seen Phillip Quast’s The Road I Took show just a week and a half earlier to hear his suave baritone adjusted to render ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’ 

Betsy can be quite dismissive of visitors saying ‘Bye’ when she’s had enough of their company. She did try that on when we first arrived but relented and I think genuinely enjoyed time with her mum and, to a lesser extent, her aunt. When it was time to go, Tabitha asked us to take the ‘boom box’ packaging with us as they are overwhelmed with garbage and recycling. Belinda asked if there was anything Betsy needed - bibs and shorts apparently.

Betsy with Ryk and me

The friend I planned to see lives just around the corner from Betsy’s group home and I had hoped to call over but was unsuccessful reaching her by calls and texts. In a streak of gruelling tragedy she has lost her partner and both her parents in the past three years. Already suffering chronic fatigue syndrome these losses and some associated legal battles have left her severely depleted. It never occurred to me that she would be out and about giving the Sunday reading at mass and going to an 80 year old’s birthday lunch which I later discovered was what was occupying her time that day. Unsurprisingly ferocious migraines ensued.

I did manage to spend time with my son, measuring, cutting and installing perforated heat resistant foil panelling to the north facing bedroom windows of his flat and then grabbing refreshments at the Ryde Eastwood Leagues Club. I only took one wrong turn on the return trip to Marrickville and coped with the Sydney traffic better than I usually do.  My son had just returned from Japan and had bought me some beautiful cards and prints well as a copy of the graphic novel Les Chats du Louvre which I had heard about in the wake of the recent jewellery theft from that prestigious art museum.

Lunch stop

On Monday morning we carted our luggage down the steep stairs, this time in pleasant cool temperatures, to our (again illegally) parked car in the laneway and went in search of a decent coffee to fortify us for the journey home.  A pet shop nearby the café had three fawn coloured Cavoodle puppies in the window identical to one of the dogs Betsy grew up with. This reminder of a lost loved dog heightened Belinda’s already emotionally raw mood in the aftermath of visiting Betsy and it was good to put some miles behind us and speed on to Goulburn for lunch. Trappers Bakery had tables where we could sit with Ryk. He and some sparrows shared the remains of Belinda’s sausage roll. We made good time on our return to Wagga stopping for a pee and to share a bakery-purchased vanilla slice at Bookham.

We judged our trip an imperfect success but in the hours that followed the return to her house it became apparent that Belinda’s beloved cat (whom my husband had been feeding but hadn’t actually clapped eyes on) was missing. She’s done the flyers and Facebook posts to no avail so far.  As I have thought a few times in response to my sister’s travails, she didn’t need this.