In the countdown to the Green Room Awards - Melbourne’s prestigious showcase of performing arts brilliance - one musical, hailed as a new Aussie cult classic, distinguishes itself.
2023 was a significant year for the sophomore season of the satirical romantic comedy The Marvellous Elephant Man: The Musical.
Following its debut at the 2022 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the original Australian production embarked on a national tour, captivating audiences in Adelaide and Sydney.
This tour culminated in an impressive 16,000 ticket sales and earned the show the coveted Adelaide Critics Circle award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, along with numerous five-star reviews. Not a bad start for an entirely indie production brought to the stage by first-time producer and the show’s co-director, Christopher HF Mitchell.
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“A surprising number of audience members have travelled to all three cities to attend the show. And I’m not talking about friends or family, but complete strangers who fell in love with the show in Adelaide. We’ve begun to call them Elephanatics!” remarked Mitchell, on the show’s unexpected popularity.
The show has since been nominated for three Green Room Awards, further celebrating the success of this indie anomaly. The show’s creators, Marc Lucchesi, Sarah Nanadagopan and Jayan Nandagopan, have been nominated for Best Writing of a New Musical (Indie).
While Sarah, the show’s musical director, has spent some time performing as a pianist in New York for Broadway audition rooms, neither Marc nor Jayan (who are both professional musicians) have ever been involved in theatre. They are the first to admit before writing the show that “musicals were never really our thing”.
One can’t help but feel this contributes to the show’s authentic and refreshingly unorthodox tone.
“We’ve been humbled by [the show’s] reception,” Marc says. “We went about writing this as something that would make our friends laugh; we had no idea audiences would respond as well as they have,” Marc plays The Ringmaster and is the frontman for popular Melbourne-based funk band Vaudeville Smash.
“Writing the score with the boys (Marc and Jay) has been a genuinely hilarious experience,” added Sarah.
“Not only were we in constant stitches, but we were able to work on a huge variety of genres, which was challenging but incredibly fulfilling to see materialise on the page,” continued Jayan, an Australian-born Sri Lankan musician, who has performed with some of the biggest names including Ray Charles, James Morrison, Roger Daltrey, and Alice Cooper.
Best Lead in an Indie Musical nominations went to Opera Australia’s long-time resident Kanen Breen for Doctor Treves, and Ben Clark for John Merrick (the Elephant Man) of the Ten Tenors.
“I was immediately drawn to the script’s humour and heart. I’ve played villains many times but Dr. Treves stands out as one of my favourites to play. Chris and Guy [co-directors] gave me a lot of permission to explore and experiment with the role and it really paid off; there were some points where I was convinced the audience was going to lynch me!” Kanen said.
Having been fortunate enough to attend both the Melbourne Chapel Off Chapel and Sydney Spiegeltent versions of the show, it’s easy to understand why the show has been received so well by audiences and critics alike.
Promoted as an irreverent retelling of the life of Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), the show exudes a forgotten Gen X comedy optimism that entertains without any ideological undertones. This is a refreshing change in today’s landscape, where many creatives and critics seem more occupied with shoehorning ideology into a production than with the audience experience.
The show has been compared by many reviews to the Rocky Horror Show and Book of Mormon, two cult classic productions that similarly took creative risks challenging the status quo of theatre upon their release.
The creative team, who began writing the show over 10 years ago, cite 1980s SNL, Ben Elton, Mel Brooks, and South Park as among their major influences, and it shows. I could not help but feel as if I was watching a live crossover episode of Black Adder and Young Frankenstein after my first viewing of the show.
As Patrick McDonald of the Adelaide Advertiser put it in his 5-star review “[it is] the equal of any top-notch Broadway or West End show! It’s ribald and politically incorrect and the audience laps that up with every gasp of shock followed by howling laughter and applause…”
“Reviewers and fans have related us to the hybrid of so many awesome shows, cult films, and pop culture, which is always super flattering to hear. I suppose there is something in the show for nearly everyone,” continued Sarah.
With the show’s sights now set on overseas markets, international development is reportedly underway, with the creative team looking forward to the next evolution of what has been a remarkable, nay, ‘marvellous’ journey so far. And I for one am excited about what’s next for what I believe is the Rocky Horror show of this generation.
To quote Barry Lenny of Broadway World “I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before [The Marvellous Elephant Man] becomes a main stage musical in the West End and on Broadway, with tickets costing an arm and a leg and audiences having to book a year or more in advance.”
The Green Room Awards Association will present the 41st Annual Green Room Awards, on Monday, 8th April 2024, at the Comedy Theatre, 240 Exhibition St, Melbourne. Find out more about the production here.
