Of loves lost and magic found in suburbia

By WILLIAM DART

For some, Footrot Flats is just a Murray Ball comicstrip; for others it's the 1986 animated movie with Dave Dobbyn and Herbs chorusing on Slice of Heaven.

But three years before the film, there was Philip Norman's musical which opened at Christchurch's Court Theatre in November 1983, and is still popular fare on both sides of the Tasman.

Christchurch-based Norman is in Auckland this week for the premiere of Kiwi Icons, a triple bill of his works presented by the young talent of Opera Factory.

He's written piano concertos and horn sonatas, but Norman admits that music theatre has always been a special lure.

"I got bitten by the theatre bug at the age of 13," he explains.

"That's what got me into music in the first place. Music theatre is the total experience, it's not just your ears that are being tickled, but also your eyes. And, on the literary side, you're having words as well as music - a truly multi-sensorial experience."

With all this comes the responsibility of "providing an audience with an enjoyable experience. The least one can do as a composer, considering that all the work has been put into the production by various people, is to write something that appeals".

Norman asserts that Witches, Clowns, Promises, the first piece on the Opera Factory bill, and based on poems by Margaret Mahy, is "very adult friendly stuff".

"Margaret Mahy has a fantastic imagination for making bizarre connections, and there are surprises even within a surprising world. And she's a fine writer of lyrics who reckons her model was Gilbert, but I think she's gone one step beyond him."

The Pleasure Garden, the second offering, was the last of many projects with the satirist A.K. Grant, who died in 2000. It was Norman's suggestion that they tackle the 1947 controversy when a Frances Hodgkins' painting provoked the ire of Garden City philistines.

"Originally Alan had suggested a piece based around Tony Fomison, but he really took to my idea. His first and only draft had this huge song for an art critic that showed he had some fairly strong feelings about the issues involved."

Norman holds that these issues of parochialism and provincialism are still with us.

"There is still a lot of intercity rivalry, and you can see this in the construction of the various town halls round the country.

"This affects us composers, although there is now more traffic between the centres than there was. I'm in my 25th year of surviving as a freelancer and it doesn't get easier.

"It's a shame that we don't have freelance composers in the sense that we have freelance authors and visual artists.

"Composition is an invisible art; we don't produce a visible product (apart from CDs) and, in a sense, we are invisible in society because we don't have the same prominence the other art forms are getting."

A Factory Opera, the final instalment of Kiwi Icons, is a bittersweet piece of nostalgia offering "true romance in Edmond's baking-powder factory".

Writer Fiona Farrell was an extraordinary stimulus here. "Fiona prompted me to use popular music of the day - jazz and swing - which I wouldn't have had the courage to do if she hadn't specified period pieces."

And it's in this work that Norman feels he's offering his best as a songwriter and trusts it will leave its mark on the Auckland audience.

"It's a simple tale of love lost, or as Fiona puts it, a Sydenham version of Romeo and Juliet where there are no daggers and histrionics.

"You don't die on a tomb. You get a job selling prams."

Performance:


* What: Kiwi Icons


* Where: Opera Factory, 18 Eden St, Newmarket


* When: May 14-24