MUSICALS

Modified on Wed, 17 Oct 2018 11:51 by Con — Categorized as: Events and Activities, Topic

MUSICALS

'Schoolboys present Iolanthe with verve and skill.' headlined the Melbourne 'Argus' newspaper in 1944. The journalist continued - 'Fairies tripped about the stage of the Plaza Theatre, Geelong, tonight when Geelong College Glee Club gave a spirited presentation of 'Iolanthe' before a packed house. The Fairies were all schoolboys but so well did they take to themselves these spritely personalities that it was almost impossible to detect the unfairylike characteristics generally attributed to the youthful scholar.'

Program 'The Monastery', 1935

The fashionably titled Glee Club of 1935 was the gifted offspring of the College Dramatic Club and it became responsible for the rise and presentation of a style of integrated musical production that was to entertain a generation of students and fascinate the citizens of Geelong in an enduring love affair with Gilbert and Sullivan from 1938 to 1958. In December 1934, the School Magazine Pegasus had bravely introduced its first Music Section and noted the forming of the Old Collegians Choir, though this was probably the reforming of an earlier choir first established in 1921. But it was with the founding of the House of Music in 1937 by then Principal, Francis Rolland that the Performing Arts at Geelong College matured into a vital and pivotal role in the life of the School.

Gondoliers, Act 1 Chorus, 1942.

In 1936, Roy Shepherd was appointed into the new Music Director’s position - a position which he used to expand on the earlier work of Lester, Ipsen and Wilson who in 1935 ably presented the first Glee Club performance of the Operetta The Monastery. Tragically, Shepherd’s work was cut short by illness.

Rolland then appointed Shepherd’s newly employed music assistant, George Logie Smith as Director in a move that had immediate and profound repercussions on College music and theatre performance. Rolland, in an article in The Australasian explained George Logie Smith’s success: 'The popular conception of music master – long haired, stuffy, fussy, and inclined to be old womanish does not go down at all well with boys. They appreciate music and art much better when it comes from someone who speaks their own language and who looks and acts like a human being.' George Logie Smith immediately formed a Percussion band, a School Orchestra and a new Junior Choir and in 1938 set to work on producing Trial by Jury, the first of the Glee Club’s Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

These performances were to form an outstanding legacy for the School and established the high standards in theatre performance that we enjoy today. So popular were these Geelong College Glee Club productions that ticket queues and sold out signs were often features of the events. The Glee Club was far more than simply a school dramatic society - it was a talented fraternity of dedicated performers. Its success also owed much to another creation of Francis Rolland, the House of Guilds, which initially supplied a range of supporting services such as sets, ticketing, brochures, flyers and programs and supported much of the behind the scenes production.

The nineteenth century approach to music and drama at Geelong College however, was a very different educational process to the one we know today. In 1863 College Principal, George Morrison’s Annual Report records that music and singing tutors were regular visitors and that a piano for individual tuition was available. The Annual Report itself was presented within the context of a display of scholarly excellence in which elocution, dramatic readings and scenes from contemporary plays were much acclaimed features of the programme.

Beginning with the School’s foundation, public performance through drama, music, song, debate, oratory and presence was a vital discipline for the Geelong College student. It was early acknowledged that leadership training required the ability to perform to an audience. The 1861 Annual Speech Day attended by many of Geelong’s leading decision makers of the day, including the mayor, featured a Mimic Parliamentary Debate. The 1867 Speech Day included a complex Minstrel performance involving several American Civil War and Plantation songs in what must have been a very topical image of the conflict so recently ended. Various references during these early years to musical evenings and choral singing attest to a continuing interest in performance.

Poster, 'Once Upon a Mattress', 2002.

George Logie Smith by Robert Inpen

Irregular musical events were complemented by performances from visiting musicians and dramatists or joint events with other Schools. Around the turn of the century the Mid-Winter concert became a regular annual feature. Ironically, it was the perceived threat of Russian invasion that indirectly prompted the first formal musicians group – the Bugle Band under Drum Major Sergeant Rashleigh. It was formed by 1890 not long after the introduction in 1885 of the Cadet Units under the Empire Cadet Training Scheme. This Bugle Band and its successors - the Drum and Bugle Bands, Brass Bands, Preparatory School Fife Band and Pipe Bands were to provide musical support in a far wider range of settings than simply cadet drilling.

Isolated accounts of dramatic and musical performances in the early years of the School are sketchy. But by the time the Morrison’s Private School re-entered the fold of the Presbyterian Church in 1908, drama and music, while not yet part of the curriculum had at least become regular features of School life, although the integrated musical performance had yet to make its appearance. The 1909 Mid-Winter Entertainment included a small orchestra and a Comedietta entitled Eh! What is it? These Mid-Winter Entertainments, often small-scale and held in the Dining Room, appear to have commenced in the late Nineteenth Century. They had, by 1909 included more formal dramatic presentations and Pegasus also notes the involvement of Mr Worth’s Junior Singing Class of that time. This growing interest and talent culminated in the first short-lived College Dramatic Society of 1913. Their production of What Happened to Jones reveals a rapidly changing School just prior to the First World War. The War however, was to bring this early creative renaissance to a bitter end.

The trauma of World War l and its impact on the School persisted for years but with Francis Rolland’s appointment and some early hesitation there came a renewal of performance enthusiasm. Pegasus sagely reported in 1919 that the Drum and Bugle Band formed in the previous year sounded like the latest ‘Jazz' Band although it is uncertain whether this was stated with opprobrium or support. In 1921, the first identifiably integrated Musical appears in the Cantata, Trial by Jury directed by Captain Dundas - the May performance of which, in Morrison Hall, was so popular that a repeat public performance was held in July at the Mechanics Institute Hall, Geelong. In 1923, with the formation of a new Dramatic Club the School magazine, Pegasus, for the first time, gave a regular heading to 'Dramatic Entertainment' in its contents. Images of casts of Vice Versa, 1924 and 1928 and Private Secretary in 1927 reveal a growing confidence in these productions.

Cast of the Wandering Minstrel (Mikado) - Preparatory School, 1927.

The recently commenced Preparatory School (1921) was also a leader during this period with Miss Trumble directing Ciderella, 1921 Alice in Wonderland, 1923, Peter Pan, 1924 and Water Babies in 1928. Of particular significance was the first Preparatory School performance of excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado in 1927 under the title of The Wandering Minstrel. This was a period in which joint performances involving the Preparatory and Senior Schools occurred each year. So excited was the Principal that in 1927 he prophetically opined that 'Geelong College promises to become a nest of singing birds' although admittedly he was merely praising 'the bringing forth of two school songs' – the Football Song and the School song by K G McIntyre.

With the establishment of the House of Music the ‘modern era’ of performance and theatre emerged and the integrated ‘Musical’ in various forms became a major theme from 1935 through to the present. These College ‘Musicals’ were publicly accessible performances usually presented over several nights in public theatres such as the Plaza or GPAC with an accomplished and professional looking cast and a well directed orchestra. They diversified in the 1960’s particularly with the later introduction of music and theatre studies to the curriculum. Many in the 1960s and 1970s were joint productions with Morongo Presbyterian Girls College and directed by the Martins’. Noye’s Fludde in 1962; The Bartered Bride in 1964; 1984 Now; the award winning EON Rock Eisteddfods of the mid 1980’s; Amadeus in 1993; The Pajama Game in 1999; and Godspell in 2004, characterise the variety and ambition of the Geelong College productions.

Sources: Magnificent Musicals: The origins of the ‘Musical’ at Geelong College. Ad Astra.