Old Farnhamians' Association

FGS Production
of
The Coolibah Tree

In March 1960, FGS presented the home grown musical The Coolibah Tree.  Alan Fluck composed the music and Michael Foster and Terry Hughes wrote the book and lyrics. The production was enthusiastically acclaimed by everyone in the locality who saw the opera in Church House, Farnham during its sell-out four night run. Enthusiasm was the main ingredient of the entire project, but some significant musical and acting talent was also displayed, with leading ladies imported for the show. Terry Hughes and Margaret Mansey made an excellent leading couple and the other principal parts were well performed. The music was reminiscent of both Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rodgers, musical heroes of Alan Fluck at this period of his life.

The instrumental performance was, well… that of a normal school orchestra. Chorus singing was of equivalent quality and extremely robust (your webmaster was in the chorus and enjoyed himself enormously but has never boasted about it on his CV).

Despite all of this faint praise, the whole production was a huge success when judged as simply a school project. It made FGS the special school that it was with a massive amount of effort and creativity from within the school itself, not just by the key staff members such as Alan Fluck and Michael Foster, but by the scores of boys who were involved. We cannot say that such things never happen today but, in those days, such events did not happen very often on this scale, in a small school, and with the creation of a totally original operatic piece.

We do not think that this opera was ever produced again. But it did lead to a further collaboration between Terry Hughes and Alan Fluck when they wrote a musical version of Love on the Dole that was produced in the Nottingham Playhouse in 1970.

Only Terry Hughes survives from the team that wrote The Coolibah Tree. Terry went on to become one of our FGS high achievers as a Hollywood director of The Golden Girls, Friends etc.

Ian Sargeant
Posted 8 November, 2008

      

   

 

   

Click the pictures to enlarge, back button to return. Press F11 for a full screen.

Photographs by the late J.S. Sargeant


Listen to the recording of The Coolibah Waltz (MP3 file)
Click Here

 

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