Looking for actors funny enough to cast in their new musical Bananaland was a tricky task for the composer Kate Miller-Heidke and her writing partner and husband Keir Nuttall.
“There is a lot of ridiculous slapstick in this show, but it’s also packed with music,” Miller-Heidke says. “It took a long time to cast because everyone has to be really genuinely funny – with funny bones.”
Now in final rehearsals before its premiere in the Brisbane festival, Bananaland, a romping rock-pop musical about a punk protest band that finds an unexpected audience among the under-fives, is about to put those bones to the test.
The show’s star is Max McKenna, who first worked with Miller-Heidke and Nuttall on Muriel’s Wedding The Musical; the non-binary star’s performance as the goofy Muriel was one of the more memorable mainstage debuts in recent decades.
In Bananaland, McKenna plays Ruby, the lead singer of Kitty Litter, an earnest and widely ignored punk rock band faced with an existential crisis. Kitty Litter accidentally becomes a pop sensation when one of their songs – sticking the middle finger to mining magnate Clive Palmer – is misinterpreted as an upbeat anthem for children. They could continue to keep raging against the machine – but they are exhausted and broke.
“Hijinks ensue,” Miller-Heidke says with a laugh. She calls McKenna “a superstar and my absolute muse”, and their physical comedy chops “astounding”. “I’m completely in love and in awe of Max’s voice,” she adds. “It doesn’t sound like a traditional music theatre voice, there is so much beauty and soul in there. I’m a massive fan.”
The feeling is mutual: McKenna calls Miller-Heidke a “genius”.
“I feel like we have a soul connection in terms of musicality – I can hear what she wants and give it back to her in my own way. It’s a very beautiful collaboration,” they say. “She can write incredible songs in five to 10 minutes and turn to me and say, ‘try this’ and I’m thinking, how the fuck did she write that so quickly?”
Kitty Litter – the name being a nod to Moscow’s all-female protest and performance art band, Pussy Riot – is made up of Ruby, her big sister Karen, Seb (Ruby’s ex-lover, just to complicate things further) and Ex, who is “just a walking mess”.
“They are very much about changing the world and sticking it to the man, but their message is not super strong,” McKenna says. “When one of their songs goes viral, they basically have to decide whether they will stay true to their convictions or become the next Wiggles.”
A musical born on the couch
Nuttall started sketching out ideas for Bananaland during the pandemic, while watching a lot of Wiggles with son Ernie, then three years old.
“I guess we all know a bit of the Wiggles’ origin story, that they were a successful rock band [the Cockroaches] before they became a kids’ band,” Nuttall says. “So, I made Kitty Litter a bit like the Cockroaches – minus the fans and the success. One of the themes I wanted to explore is how the audience decides what kind of music they like, and how that can end up defining what you do.”
After first adapting John Marsden’s book The Rabbits for Opera Australia in 2015 and then moving on to the music theatre version of Muriel’s Wedding, Miller-Heidke and Nuttall both felt a deep yearning to create something entirely new.
“I think we both wanted to make something that was a bespoke vehicle for our talents and the talents of some of the actors we’ve worked with,” Miller-Heidke says. “Covid gave us time to think. Also, with a young child around all the time, we found ourselves wanting to peer behind his eyes and figure out what was going on in there for him, how he was seeing the world.”
For a while, it was good to have the merry-go-round come to a stop. “After Muriel, I wanted to explore some ideas about authenticity in art,” Miller-Heidke says. “What does ‘authentic’ mean; what is it to ‘sell out’; what does it mean to get older and to start to compromise more?”
Some of Nuttall’s introspection is threaded in too. Before he found himself working in musical theatre, he played in a bunch of largely forgotten Brisbane bands: an experimental rock-funk trio called More; industrial metal outfit Dogmachine (which toured with international names including Atari Teenage Riot and White Zombie); an 1980s covers band named Space Invaders.
But industrial metal’s loss is musical theatre’s gain. “I love what you can achieve in musical theatre, the ways you are able to play with the form of music and put different frames around a story,” he says. “It’s really exciting when music theatre works, it knocks you over the head and gets you in the heart. That’s what I love most about it.”
“A show is like a ship setting sail. Everyone in the team comes together for a short period of time, then it all just … evaporates,” he adds. “It’s completely ephemeral. I just love that, in a century where everything is on record, it’s like magic.”
Bananaland isn’t aimed at kids, though they might like it anyway. “There’s no nudity or language, and there’s a lot of wacky stuff going on,” Nuttall says.
“There is one small dick pic, but that will go over their heads,” Miller-Heidke chips in. “And there is one number which is basically an elaborate execution of Simon Cowell … It’s almost like a Jesus Christ Superstar moment where Simon is whipped.”
Anything else we should know about before bringing the littlies along? “There is another moment where a toy pig gets its throat cut and guts go everywhere,” says Miller-Heidke laughing. “We will be taking Ernie.”
Bananaland is on at Brisbane festival 16 September – 1 October
