Play - Reedy River
Author: Dick Diamond
Produced: 1953, 1954, 1960 (twice), 1963, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1982, 1988, and 2002 (a concert version). A musical "as warm as a handshake", Reedy River was hugely successful for Sydney New Theatre and has assisted its finances more than once. It was first produced by Melbourne New Theatre, and subsequently by New Theatres in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Newcastle. The Sydney show also toured suburban and NSW country centres.
Alec Robertson and June Cairns as the original Joe and Mary, 1953
The musical deals with the aftermath of the 1891 shearers' strike and the birth of the Australian Trade Union movement.
Reedy River had a part in the birth of the Bushwhackers folk group and the revival of Australian folk music. It was a popular choice for musical societies and schools, and was staged in Montreal and in London at the Unity Theatre and the Little Theatre Club. It has been broadcast in Polish on Radio Warsaw and in Russian on Radio Moscow.
At a time of unofficial Press censorship of the left-wing New Theatre there was no mention of the early productions of Reedy River in the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age. In Sydney, although it broke the record for the longest running non-professional show, there was only one review, a few lines long and guarded in its praise, in a mainstream paper. "But", philosophised Bushwhacker Chris Kempster," it was pointed out to us we were bloody lucky to get even a mention".
See:
- The 1940s - Premises
- The 1950s - Premises
- The 1960s - Premises
- The 1980s - The Workers
- The Reedy River Songbook, published 1954 - pdf
1953
1953 camp scene
The Bushwhackers, 1953
1969
LP record
1960
1988
Marty O'Neill, Jim Dempsey, Michael Adam Smith, 1988
1963
1963
Bob the Swaggie, sketch by Herbert McClintock, 1963
