Tom Gleisner has spent a lot of time in aged care over the past decade. The screenwriter, TV host and film-maker has seen his father, mother-in-law and father-in-law enter institutions that they would never leave.
“I’ve come to know that world really well, but it was very confronting at first,” Gleisner says. “The sunken eyes and slumped-over bodies stuck in front of an André Rieu DVD. The danger is that you start to think these people are all the same.”
We live in a society where people are deemed uninteresting after a certain age or when a health condition such as dementia develops, Gleisner says. As a result, we run the risk of seeing elderly people as less than fully human – a risk that Australia’s aged care crisis is only making worse.
“That’s to our shame. The elderly might be from a generation that is less likely to talk about their life stories, but they’re all there. Aged care is a fascinating microcosm of society. There’s a story in every room.”
Gleisner’s closeup experience has fed into a new project, Bloom: a musical comedy premiering at the Melbourne Theatre Company next week. It’s an unusual venture for a writer who has been part of the Working Dog film and TV partnership since the mid-1980s, bringing Australia movies such The Castle and The Dish, and TV series including The Hollow Men and Utopia.
In the company of singer, actor and composer Katie Weston and director Dean Bryant, Bloom will be Gleisner’s first foray into the world of the stage musical.
“When I started jotting down the broad outline of Bloom, it kind of snuck up on me: ‘It’s a musical!’” Gleisner says. “It’s a form I love but have no direct experience in, other than being a fan. Even when we had a script, I still wasn’t sure what to do with it but then I saw Fun Home [Alison Bechdel’s memoir-musical, which Bryant directed in Australia], and I thought, wow, this is where Bloom belongs.”
Inspired by the story of a care home in the Netherlands where local college students were given free room and board in exchange for care work, Bloom starts with a struggling music student, Finn (played by Slone Sudiro, who comes to the show after a long stint on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), seizing on a similar opportunity in a Melbourne aged care facility. This brings him into conflict with the tyrannical owner of the facility, Mrs MacIntyre (Anne Edmonds), and with his own assumptions and prejudices – which are gradually worn away by his contact with the facility’s residents, whom he comes to respect and love.
Gleisner’s own contact with the aged care system, much of it overshadowed by Melbourne’s Covid-19 crisis – when his mother-in-law went into care – left its mark on the work. “We saw the worst of it,” he says. “It was really an awful period, having to wave at your loved ones from behind glass.” In the background, too, was the royal commission into aged care quality and safety with its associated headlines of abuse, neglect and exploitation.
“I was conscious of that but I didn’t set out to write a scathing indictment of the system,” says Gleisner. “If you’re looking for solutions, perhaps Bloom is not the show for you. But I think it offers something hopeful in showing what happens when old and young come together.”
It was, however, important to Gleisner that Bloom would speak honestly and humanely about people living their final years in full-time care. “Too often in films or television, old people are the punchline. ‘Here’s Fred, he’s always losing his reading glasses,’ that kind of thing. I wanted to treat my characters with the same deference I’d treat anyone.”
Bloom’s characters are often inspired by real counterparts. “There was a woman in a facility my father was at. She was a total kleptomaniac,” Gleisner recalls. “Every day they had to work out whose property was missing from which room, but they all knew where it would end up. People and moments like that I’ve put in. But I’ve also really tried to capture that idea that behind every set of eyes there’s a story, a life lived, whether it’s mundane, tragic or hilarious.”
Composer Katie Weston has been attached to the project from the start. Bloom was a different beast in its early iteration, she says.
“It read like a film script,” she said. “It was long and with lots of characters. So, in that first six months, Tom and I really worked on turning the script into a proper musical format. Not every supporting character and their cousin and their dog needed a song!”
Weston’s music reflects the span of ages and experiences on stage, from contemporary pop to classic music theatre and classical.
“I think we’ve come up with something unique,” she says. “I don’t think there is another musical in the world that’s set in an aged care facility. And it’s very Australian, too. Anyone who has seen The Castle or watched Tom’s show Have You Been Paying Attention? will get it. That laid-back Aussie humour is really embedded in the show. There is a lot of love in the room.”
Gleisner hopes Bloom will speak to young people as well as the MTC’s traditionally older audience. “In my whole career of writing, I’ve never written anything with an audience in mind. I find it unhelpful. If an idea amuses me, I just hope that other people find it amusing too and come along on the ride.”
Bloom is playing at the Arts Centre, Melbourne until 19 August
