MIDSUMMA welcomes Bryant and Frank’s Prodigal

The first Australian musical ever produced in New York City, Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank’s Prodigal had its world premiere at Melbourne’s Midsumma festival in January 2000. Eleven years later it is returning for a brand new season at Midsumma 2011.

The story of a young gay man who turns his back on the family business and moves to Sydney, eventually returning home for an awkward reconciliation, the musical was conceived as a contemporary take on the biblical story of the prodigal son; and was written while Bryant and Frank – partners in life as well as professionally – were studying at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

“We actually met seeing Evita, the movie,” Bryant says with an embarrassed cough. “He was a third year and I was a first year and we hit it off straight away and started going out three days later, and have been going out since, which is like 14 years.”

After a hesitant start, during which time Frank was experimenting with several other lyricists, the pair began working together.

“He was like ‘That’s a bad idea, I think our relationship will suffer’. Ironically I think it’s probably strengthened our relationship, as it’s worked out.”

Inspired by the home-grown success of The Boy from Oz, Frank came up with the idea of a musical based on an update of the parable of the prodigal son.

“From that idea, which I thought was a really strong, dramatic idea, we started working, and we wrote a draft over the course of my second year. It was okay, but it was so, so clichéd – I think the lead character died of AIDS at the end, or cancer, I can’t quite remember. It was the first thing I’d written and I pretty much relied on the movie Beaches. It was essentially Beaches with a gay boy,” Bryant laughs.

Following numerous rewrites, including dramaturgical advice from the late Nick Enright and a workshop at WAAPA, Prodigal premiered at Chapel off Chapel for Midsumma, and was rapturously received. Critics called the production ‘wonderful’ and ‘achingly beautiful’. It went on to win several Green Room awards, and later received an American premiere, which was equally well received.

Now, eleven years later, a revival of Prodigal returns to Midsumma, with an all new cast including Anne Wood (Mamma Mia!) and Christina O’Neill (Avenue Q), and featuring recent WAAPA graduate Ed Grey (Spring Awakening) in the lead role.

“I’m really excited to bring Prodigal back now because it feels like it’s coming back with no expectations, whereas it felt like our entire lives rested on it last time. Now it feels like a chance to say ‘This is a lovely story, people will enjoy it, I hope they come and have a great time’. I don’t think it has to prove anything any more,” Bryant explains.

In the intervening years since Prodigal’s premiere, Bryant and Frank have worked on a number of MTC musicals including 2010’s smash success The Drowsy Chaperone. Their adaptation of Sonya Hartnett’s The Silver Donkey has toured the US and a collation of their work, All Roads Lead to Home was part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Additionally, Bryant is the Worldwide Associate Director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – the Musical, and is currently preparing for his mainstage MTC directing debut on 2011’s Next to Normal, with Frank as Music Director.

Theirs has been a remarkable success story, though not quite the fairytale that it sounds.

“In the framework of everything that’s happened recently it sounds really good, but honestly, at the time, we were thrilled with Prodigal’s response, particularly when it went to off-Broadway in 2002, it was a perfect fairytale – except that then nothing happened for a few years … It was basically a slog. It’s absolutely arduous how much you have to just keep believing in your work. No-one comes after you; you just have to keep going to them.”

Audiences familiar with the original production of Prodigal may notice one or two minor changes to the revived version of the show, although Bryant had originally intended to present it unchanged.

“The bulk of it got written when we were 21, and then a lot of rewrites when we were 24, for the New York production; and I thought [this new season] had to be representative of the young men we were who’d never written another show before. Then I read it again, last week, and I went ‘Ooh, there’s some naff bits in this’ … Some of it has the youthful exuberance that audiences will love, and then there’s bits where I’m like ‘You have eight more years of writing skill since then, so just fix it!’”

Bryant and Frank Productions present Prodigal, January 19 – 28 at fortyfivedownstairs

Midsumma
January 16 – February 6

For more details, including ticketing information, see the festival’s Arts Hub events listing