Sing a song of nonsense

Arts editor LINDA HERRICK explores how a show grew out of irresistible silliness.

It started life as nonsense rhymes written for children, then grew into a book of cartoons and a CD of songs featuring the voices of no less than Tim and Neil Finn, Chris Knox, John Clarke, Bic and Boh Runga, Dave Dobbyn, Don McGlashan and the Topp Twins.

Now The Underwatermelon Man has begun its next stage of existence as a live show. Magic tricks, song, dance, aerialists, a band, nasty villains and a spectacular amount of silliness proved an irresistible mix for hundreds of kids and grown-ups when the show debuted at the New Zealand Festival last month - a workout for its Auckland season at the Civic Theatre starting on Wednesday.

It all began in the mid-70s, when composers Fane Flaws and Peter Dasent played in the band the Crocodiles.

To amuse their kids, Flaws made up nonsense rhymes with his mate, writer Arthur Baysting. Then Flaws scribbled drawings to go with the rhymes, in turn inspiring Dasent to find the music.

"I wrote the first tune in about five minutes," recalls Dasent. "Eventually the only times we'd see each other, we'd do a song."

Adds Flaws, "After 12 years we had about 50 songs and my wife said to me I had to pick the best, do the CD and finish the book. We seriously started recording sessions so then we had that product, the book and CD, which sold really well."

Far too much momentum to stop there, hence the inspiration for the stage show, and the headache of translating "25 disparate pieces of nonsense into some sort of entertainment".

To the rescue came Australian writer-director Neill Gladwin, originally one half of the comedy duo Los Trios Ringbarkus and therefore equipped with the right level of madness for the job.

"Obviously you need to make a journey, tell a story, and we mucked around and tried things out," says Flaws. "We had a bunch of characters and songs and somehow had to turn that into a plot, which is not the ideal way of doing it. But many of the rhymes had a subtext which helped the story come together."

But it was never going to be a straight narrative, with characters such as Melon Cauli Baby, the Man with the Elephant Nose, Carmen the Wicked Conjuror and a bunch of dancing knights. Central to the narrative is teenager Zenobiah Blade (played superbly by 15-year-old Ellen Simpson, with Jackie Clarke as her mother), whose search for her missing inventor father forms the basis of the "plot".

"Neill had the idea her father was missing and she would search for him, and once we'd decided that, it wrote itself," says Flaws.

Judging by the feverish audience reaction before the curtain had even lifted for the Wellington show, another dramatic device works effectively as well: the use of an MC, in this case comedian Mark Wright. "It's to warm up the audience, get them in the right frame of mind, get them ready to respond like a pantomime, yelling out."

And the adults evidently, who - at the St James - needed little encouragement to yell, boo, whistle, stamp and cheer as madly as any child.

The Underwatermelon Man has far to travel after this Auckland season, Flaws believes. "We are about to animate the book for TV and videos. We would like to take the show offshore. There is already interest in Australia".

* The Underwatermelon Man, the Civic, Wednesday to April 10.