Bon Scott, Humphrey, Fat Cat, Jimmy Barnes get in on the 1970s Adelaide musicals act
Penny Welsh and Axel Bartz in the 1972 Adelaide musical Love Travelling Salesman.
Image courtesy "The A-Z of Australian musicals – The Adelaide Connection" by Peter Pinne & Peter Wyllie Johnston
Eight original musicals opened in Adelaide during the 1970s. Love Travelling Salesman and The computer, one-act folk operas, by Peter Pinne and Don Battye, commissioned by the Adelaide Festival of Arts, were a double bill at lunchtime and evening performances at the AMP Theatre, in 1972. Both dealt with love in a commercial world and used the same cast: Marie Fidock, Axel Bartz, Penny Welsh, Peter Strawhan, Wendy Parsons.
Two months later, Barry Eggington’s I Love You Humphrey B. Bear at the Royalty Theatre, during school holidays, introduced David King as a composer and had Robyn Archer as the wicked witch Hepzibah. It played 24 performances before going to Melbourne and Perth.
In 1973, the Royalty Theatre again housed a children's TV musical, Golly Gosh! Fat Cat, for 16 performances. Alistair McHaig wrote the score and Malcolm Harslett did the sets.
David King also composed for Goldilocks and the Three Bears, with a 22-performance season at the Royalty Theatre in 1973. Harold Tidemann in The Advertiser said the song “Someone” was “outstanding”.
The Circle Theatre at Adelaide Festival Centre, in 1976, saw 18 performances of Steve Spears' Young Mo or The Resuscitation of the Little Prince Who Couldn't Laugh as Performed by Young Mo at the Height of the Great Depression. A jukebox musical with some original music by Roy Ritchie, it was the story of Adelaide-born comic Roy Rene, his partner Nat Phillips, wife Sadie Gale and variety star Queenie Paul.
The original cast included Michael Scheid as Mo, with Robyn Archer as Queenie Paul. The Arts Council took it on tour throughout South Australia in 1976, with Rob George as Mo. In 1977 a production by Nimrod Theatre, Sydney featured Garry McDonald as Mo, and Gloria Dawn as Queenie Paul.
Also in 1977, Lofty, “an epic from the annals of country rock,” was staged at Her Majesty’s Theatre with music and lyrics by Peter Beagley (later Head), a former member of blues rock band Headband.
The book by Rob George involved a bushranger Lofty, deported from England for singing suggestive songs at Queen Adelaide's nuptial feast, and his gang of Lofty Rangers, who rewarded people they plunder by singing them songs. The cast included Wayne Anthoney, Maureen Sherlock and Tony Strachan. One song was written by Bon Scott, later vocalist with rock group AC/DC. The Lofty Rangers lineup at times included Glenn Shorrock, Robyn Archer and Jimmy Barnes.
Reg Livermore's rock opera Ned Kelly – The Electric Music Show, with music by Patrick Flynn, was produced by the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, Eric Dare, and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. The visually impressive production opened at the Festival Theatre to good notices but a withering review from Advertiser arts editor Shirley Despoja (known in theatrical circles as “Shirley Destroyer”) called it “monumental bad taste, vulgar and pretentious”. The show only had 31 performances.