Theatre
The new Australian musical Bloom is a warm, funny and occasionally sentimental look at very real problems in aged care. By Cassie Tongue.
Bloom seeks dignity within a broken system
If you were a cash-strapped university student, would you accept an offer of free room and board at an aged-care home? It’s a great deal, except for the one small as-advertised catch: “Some light duties required.”
Finn (Slone Sudiro), who was just kicked out of a flat-share, has no other choice. He wheels his bike over to Pine Grove Aged Care to take up the offer just as Rose (Evelyn Krape) checks in as a resident. She wants to be there even less than Finn does, and these two rebel outsiders forge a fast bond.
Following the continuing adventures of the pair sounds like the premise of a quirky sitcom (it’d fit right in on ABC TV). Here it’s the beginning of Bloom, a new Australian musical with music by Katie Weston (Falling Forward) and book and lyrics by Working Dog’s Tom Gleisner – who you’d probably tap to write said sitcom, given his work on film and television projects such as Utopia, The Castle and The Dish.
Bloom is based on the real-life story of Dutch university students boarding in aged-care homes to help combat the social isolation that many residents experience. The concept has since gone global: the sweetly named “Gold Soul” program houses select allied health students from the University of Sydney at residential care home Scalabrini Bexley, half an hour’s drive from where Bloom is currently playing at the Roslyn Packer Theatre.
Our Finn isn’t a health student – he’s studying music – and he isn’t a natural at the volunteering gig. He oversleeps and avoids tasks. Ruby (Vidya Makan), a young, dedicated personal care assistant, has no patience for any of Finn’s antics – she’s more concerned about this unqualified volunteer being treated as a fix-it measure for the understaffed and under-resourced centre. Nurse Gloria (Christina O’Neill), who has been in the sector for much longer, has a little more patience for Finn and can appreciate the spark of energy he brings into the home, unfocused as it is.
Ruby’s concerns are grounded in very real problems and that reality sits at the heart of Bloom. There is a labour crisis in aged care and the sector remains underfunded. This need to keep an eye on those budget numbers leads to missed enrichment opportunities for residents and creates precarity around standards of care. Enter Bloom’s villain, Mrs MacIntyre (Christie Whelan Browne).
Cartoonishly parsimonious, MacIntyre cancels all outings, mocks the carers’ concern for residents’ psychosocial health and forces the residents to eat their dinner before 4pm to save on staff numbers. She’s the corporate miser type Gleisner is gifted at writing: pompous, ruthless and deeply silly. Whelan Browne’s joyous embrace of playing the heel makes MacIntyre an enemy you love to hate, and when the residents begin to consider fighting back, you’re right there with them to cheer on the mutiny.
The rebellion begins, fittingly for a musical, with music. Rose won’t let Finn stop practising the piano, and as he starts to play with and for the residents – in secret after activities are cancelled – the characters begin that eponymous blooming. They unfurl and reach out towards each other.
This production, which premiered at Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023, fits beautifully in the Roslyn Packer Theatre. Dann Barber’s thoughtfully realistic healthcare facility set is a stand-out. When you peer through doorways and corridors during actor entrances and exits, you see the same institutional paint job and directional labels, creating the illusion that just offstage there really might be a kitchen or an executive’s office. Late in the piece, the backdrop moves to reveal a touching new landscape.
The residents are a lovely, oddball lot (another Gleisner sweet spot). There’s our friend Rose, a well-travelled former teacher; Roland (John O’May), a former actor who sometimes confuses reality for the stage; Lesley (Jackie Rees), a painter with great taste; Doug (John Waters), a fix-it bloke who has a thing for Lesley; Sal (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i), who doesn’t seem to talk anymore; and Betty (Maria Mercedes), a lovably light-fingered mobility scooter user.
It’s unfortunate, then, that we only gain the residents’ potted life stories – rightly in song, where critical character revelations reside in musicals – in the back half of the show. Moving this might have helped establish their uniqueness earlier, with a stronger emotional audience buy-in for the whole ensemble. Waiting to upend the audience’s expectations of the older characters, who are underserved in contemporary storytelling across the board, would make more sense in a screen project, when cameras and close-ups fill in the subtle and more telling cues that musicals deliver in song.
Gleisner’s book is funny and sweet: each character has a moment to land a great gag and to play a deeper emotion. The lyrics are less fresh, although “Chasing the Clock” swiftly introduces us to the rhythms of life at Pine Grove, and “I Just Need a Break”, Finn’s “I want” song, has a playful narrative structure. “Everything I do”, MacIntyre’s villain song, is delightful, although the ensemble staging – with residents and staff as willing participants of her literal kickline, while visibly gagging to suggest they are loath to be involved – feels like a lazy solution to staging a full-cast number with opposed character interests. Later an unexpected character sings and the moment is stirringly beautiful.
The rest of the numbers pass by pleasantly – and occasionally dutifully – with Weston’s Broadway-pastiche sound, which leans heavily on warm pop melodies mixed with the soft rock of adult contemporary. When the most playful lyrical moment occurs not in a musical number but in a series of vocal warm-ups Finn runs through with the residents, you can’t help but wish the songs would rise to meet the jokes in the script. Still, music director Lucy Bermingham keeps the score well timed, well paced and cheerful – until the story, and the sound, veers into solemnity and, later, sentimentality.
Director and production dramaturge Dean Bryant never loses sight of the heart of Bloom. He sets a bouncy, crackling pace, letting laughs land cheekily and keeping conversations buoyant, while holding the show’s more moving moments sacred. When the plot turns sorrowful, we slow down to really feel it.
Musicals take years to develop, and this one, now on its second outing, could do with more fine-tuning, but it’s fantastic at making an audience laugh, cry and care. Bloom is a comedy with a big heart on its sleeve and when Pine Grove’s residents and staff rise up to demand better conditions, better carers and better lives, you can’t help but wish for it too – for these characters but also for all the very real people like them seeking dignity, care, respect and enrichment in a broken system.
Bloom is playing at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, until May 11.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 12, 2025 as "Late bloomer".
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