DICK DIAMOND’S AUSTRALIAN CLASSIC
‘REEDY RIVER’
Produced and presented by Theatre Genesis and Magda Community Artz
Director Jan Nary
A ROLLICKING AUSTRALIAN MUSICAL PLAY SET IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE SHEARERS’ STRIKE OF 1891. SHEARER JOE, GOALED AFTER THE SHEARERS’ UNION STAND AT BARCALDINE, RETURNS TO REEDY RIVER FOR THE WOOL CUP, HOPING THAT THERE IS STILL A CHANCE FOR HIS MARRIAGE. THE SHEARERS WALK OUT WHEN THEY DISCOVER NON-UNION LABOUR IN THE SHEDS BUT SURPRISINGLY JOE STAYS ON. THE SHEARERS DECIDE TO TEACH HIM A LESSON – BUT THERE ARE OTHER LESSONS TO BETAUGHT AND LEARNED. BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL
Tickets
Adults $25; Concession $20; Students $18:
Family: 2 adults and 2 children $65
Children 12 and under: FREE.
Mervyn : 0400 497 422
Don: 0400 114 434
Interview with Mervyn from Magda Community Artz about their putting on
JAN NARY
I was born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, a city noted more for its shipbuilding yards and football than for its music and culture.
When I was about three we came to Sydney – good old Erskineville, much like Middesbrough except that it had railway yards instead of shipyards. The music I was exposed to as a kid was rarely what we’d call folk – it was Mam playing classical music on the piano, with me and the family dog curled up beside it, or Mam and Dad singing popular music-hall duets in the kitchen, my brother’s questionable banjo playing (remember Perc. Watson’s Banjo School of the Air?), songs that came out of the mantel radio or family suppers around the piano singing whatever was popular at the time, before cocoa and cake for supper. Dad was one of those who could pick up anything and play it and he was an exceptionally good bones player (don’t snigger; there is an art to it!). We were also in a Concert Party, those wonderful long-gone troupes of performers who did community concerts in local halls and shows in gaols and the like. I vividly remember waiting at a freezing railway station after a gig at the Mittagong Boys’ Home. I was dead-tired, cold and I smashed a tooth on a piece of rock-hard liquorice someone had given me to cheer me up.
Folk music moved – subtly – into my life when I was about five. The (original) Bushwhackers had some gigs lined up and for some reason needed another muso – perhaps someone was poorly or out of town. Brian Loughlin (dear Brian, many years dead now) contacted Dad about depping with the band for a while. He came around to tea one evening and I was instantly captivated by him; not only did he play this incredible thing called a lagerphone but he let me plague him mercilessly all evening without losing his good humour. Dad did the gigs but over the years we lost touch with Brian and my brief episode with folk seemed to have passed into oblivion … http://www.folkrag.org/profiles/janary.htm