![]() Among them was Gunston, a chronically under-prepared reporter striving for a Gold Logie (which, amusingly, he subsequently won in 1976), who had raced to Canberra to cover the event. To set the scene: Just after Whitlam was sacked on November 11, 1975, he took to the steps of Parliament House to address a gaggle of reporters. He was directing Justin Smith (who plays Whitlam in The Dismissal) in a production of Tick Tick … Boom! for Squabbalogic, the independent musical theatre outfit he co-founded with his wife James-Moody. James-Moody was first inspired to turn Australia's great constitutional crisis into a musical in 2011. The team laid plans to mount a full-fledged production the following year but, like so many shows slated for 2020, the pandemic intervened.ĭespite the delay, the extra time has allowed them to finesse the show - and, unexpectedly, incorporate a late-stage development in the saga: the release in 2020 of the so-called " Palace letters", which revealed behind-the-scenes politicking between the Governor-General and the Queen.ĪBC Arts talked to the trio about why It's Time - show time. James-Moody and Erickson, along with composer Laura Murphy, set out to write a first draft in 2018 ahead of a week-long staged preview in mid-2019, which was enthusiastically received. "But what a musical has to offer is the ability to go beyond mere dates, times, places actions into what what makes them tick, and how they reconcile all the forces."īut it's been a long journey to mount the show. ![]() "You've got these larger-than-life characters, these ultra-high stakes of statesmanship … and these incredibly flawed people in the middle of it all," says co-writer Blake Erickson. It's a high-stakes political drama – and it's deliciously ripe for musical theatre, say the writers of The Dismissal, currently in its world premiere season at Sydney's Seymour Centre. It was the first and - so far - only time such an event has occurred in Australian history. It's the stuff of legend: Whitlam, a popularly elected Labor prime minister (he secured 49.59 per cent of the popular vote to the Liberal Party's 32.04 per cent in 1972), was abruptly dismissed by governor-general Sir John Kerr, who drew on his reserve powers to install a caretaker government under opposition leader Malcolm Fraser. If you didn't live through it, you've heard about it: the 1975 ousting of Australia's 21st prime minister, Gough Whitlam.
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