In the late '60s and early '70s, internationally popular rock operas like 'Hair' and 'Tommy' inspired homegrown productions like 'Man-Child' and 'Childhead's Doll'. Jordie Kilby dives headfirst into the hippy history of Australian rock and pop opera.

Rock musicals, rock operas and pop operas flourished in the late ‘60s and 1970s. Internationally popular productions like Hair and Tommy were the groundbreakers that turned many on to the idea of combining theatre, storytelling and rock music.

We all felt like rock stars I guess because it was a packed house every night, there was standing room only and we were the talk of the town, we were doing interviews and it was a very big deal for us and we all sort thought, “Well it’s onwards and upwards for us from here.” Chris Neal, composer

Hair had its Australian premiere in Sydney in June 1969 and it continued there for two years before travelling around the country. Produced by Harry M. Miller and directed by Jim Sharman, it broke box office records and the soundtrack was a big seller. Godspell, Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Jesus Christ Superstar were just a few of the big successes that followed.

With interest in the concept at an all time high, the 1970s saw a crowd of young, talented and committed musicians working towards bringing their own locally-grown productions to the stage. Two very early examples premiered in 1971: Man-child in Sydney and Childhead’s Doll in Brisbane.

Man-child

‘It’s about the randomness of life … of how you’re here one minute and gone the next, and how you’d better get relationships established because there’s not much else that you can rely on,’ recalls composer Chris Neal. ‘It was hippy, it was flower power, it was joy, joy, joy … It was indeed a happening. A hippy happening’

Neal first hit upon the idea for Man-child while he was working in Vietnam in 1968.

‘I had a lot of free time on my hands because I was there as a sort of coach slash writer for incoming acts that were working for this American agency ... I’d been brought up on a diet of musicals my parents were all into Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein and I’d always thought it would be a good idea to write a rock musical. ‘

Upon returning to Sydney, Neal became aware of Hair and its trailblazing run at the Metro Theatre. His brother Jim put up some money for the production and Chris went about putting together a team to make it happen. A key member was director Michael O’Reilly.

‘Michael could see straight away that he could bring a lot to the show and we were very impressed by his credentials,’ says Neal. ‘He’d choreographed and directed quite a few shows in and around Sydney at the Old Tote and Ensemble and so on. He really was responsible for pulling the thing together as a visual work’

The production struggled to find a suitable venue that was available in Sydney, which drove them to a unique but expensive solution.

‘We ended up getting a plastic bubble tent built by an organisation in Adelaide who had just developed this technology. It was a 600 seat theatre which was called the Bubble Theatre.’

The $40,000 tent was erected at the Sydney Showground and final rehearsals began. However, they soon realised that while the bubble made an amazing space for theatre productions, it didn’t have the best acoustics for a rock concert.

‘One of our highfalutin’ ideas was that we decided we were going to have the world’s first quadraphonic PA system,’ says Neal.

‘Then we started rehearsing in there and we realised that a plastic bubble is just an acoustic nightmare. So we started to bring in all kinds of baffling and pushing the speakers out from the walls and changing directions of tweeters. It went on and on, but by the time we had our first preview performance it was sounding pretty good.’

The preview week in early August 1971 saw a positive response from the critics. Then, just as it seemed Man-child would be off to a flying start, a freak accident held them back: a massive storm tore a hole in the bubble.

With the Bubble Theatre gone, the production was forced on to the road. Their first stop was Brisbane, where Man-child proved a great success. In their first week at the SGIO theatre they broke the box office attendance record. Things only got better when they moved to Perth.

‘We all felt like rock stars I guess because it was a packed house every night, there was standing room only and we were the talk of the town, we were doing interviews and it was a very big deal for us and we all sort thought, “Well it’s onwards and upwards for us from here.”’

More sold-out shows followed in Adelaide and there was momentum for Man-child to move on to Melbourne, where they planned to record an album and start a season at the Metro Theatre.

Things didn’t go to plan, though. The company was informed by their promoter that the theatre wouldn’t be needing their services: they’d got Grease instead.

‘It sounds funny now but I tell you what it wasn’t at the time,’ says Neal. We just had to pack our bags and go back to Sydney and that was the end of that . We couldn’t keep the company together because there was just nothing else to go to.’

For all the success it had enjoyed on the road, awareness for Man-child fell away quickly. The soundtrack sold around 5000 copies and cracked the lower end of the top 40 charts but stalled without the show on the road to promote it.

As far as Neal can recall there has never been another production and he’s fairly sure there won’t be one in the near future either.

‘I wouldn’t allow it to be put on now,’ he says. Its relevance is completely gone ... it thrived on joy, joie de vivre, the smile ... if it was going to be redone again I’d probably write about another three drafts and give it a bit of sophistication.’

Childhead’s Doll

Queensland students Ralph Tyrrell and Willy Young met while working together on university revues in the late ‘60s. Tyrrell remembers he was writing music and Young was writing sketches.

In 1970 Tyrrell got his first professional break when Bryan Nason invited him to write the score for his new production, Bacchoi. The show featured a young Geoffrey Rush and became a hit. Eager to produce more professional work, Tyrrell teamed up once again with Young and they began developing the idea of Childhead’s Doll.

‘He got very into Bob Dylan and I was into it back in the Blonde On Blonde days,’ says Tyrrell. ‘He loved the episodic Dylan, the “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” Dylan.’

‘So he wrote this episodic song called “The Simpleton and Ada”, which was done as a performance in the revues, about a simple guy who falls in love with a doll at the local fair, the unrequited love story. So that probably was the genesis ... he could see that it could probably go the distance if it was expanded into two acts’

Childhead’s Doll premiered at the Schonell Theatre in February 1971 and was billed as a pop opera.

‘I grew up schooled by the Beatles, the Stones and rock, but I was always interested in classical,’ says Tyrrell.

‘Is it a rock opera? It’s got elements but it’s more lyrical. It’s got a bit of a show sound, a bit of vaudeville... it covers a lot of bases, let me put it that way.’

One of the lead roles, Long John the clown, went to Tyrrell’s new friend from Bacchoi, Geoffrey Rush.

‘It’s an allegory for loss of innocence,’ he says. ‘It’s a happy valley where a chap makes dolls, life size dolls. The Black Prince comes along and decides he’s going to steal the doll if he can’t buy it.

‘The Childhead, who is the hero, and his companion Long John, go off to retrieve the doll. They find the doll and unfortunately it’s been burnt. Childhead sells his soul to get the doll back. There’s this transition and then the doll reappears.’

The show proved popular with crowds and critics alike.

‘Childhead’s Doll was a hit. It’s been done at least 10 or 12 times across Australia over the last 20 or 30 years,’ says Tyrrell.

An early fan of the production was Jim Sharman who, hot off the success of Hair, told Ralph he wanted to make it into a film of Childhead’s Doll.

That never eventuated, but Tyrrell did get to work with Sharman in 1972 when he scored the cult classic Shirley Thompson versus the Aliens.

Tyrrell and Yang worked on two more productions in Queensland after Childhead’s Doll: Odd Odyssey (1972) and Cooper and Borges (1973). After Young and Tyrrell moved to Sydney in the mid-‘70s, Young reverted to his real name, William Yang, and became well known for his depictions of the Sydney party scene of the late ‘70s and the Chinese Diaspora.

Tyrrell joined Dorothy Hewett at the Paris Theatre on productions like Pandora’s Cross and also became involved in producing scores for film and television. He is still writing musical theatre and his most recent project looks at the Men’s Shed movement.

Looking back, Tyrrell says Childhood’s Doll represents a special time in his life.

‘The window opened very, very briefly and big magic bunch of white doves flew out. Some of them were really good. Some crows flew out too. Childhead’s Doll is a lovely white dove that flew out and it’s still flying around. It’s got a magic thing about it.’

‘Of all the things I’ve ever been involved in it keeps coming back’

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