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NLA News - home January 2003 Volume XIII Number 4
Bunyippy Traits: Peter O'Shaughnessy, Barry Humphries and Bunyips on Stage
Newspaper cuttings from a scrapbook kept by Peter O'Shaughnessy. Barry Humphries as The Bunyip in The Bunyip and the Satellite, Melbourne, 1957 Newspaper cuttings from a scrapbook kept by Peter O'Shaughnessy. Barry Humphries as The Bunyip in The Bunyip and the Satellite, Melbourne, 1957 Newspaper cuttings from a scrapbook kept by Peter O'Shaughnessy. Barry Humphries as The Bunyip in The Bunyip and the Satellite, Melbourne, 1957

Newspaper cuttings from a scrapbook kept by Peter O'Shaughnessy.
Barry Humphries as The Bunyip in The Bunyip and the Satellite,
Melbourne, 1957
Peter O'shaughnessy Papers
Manuscript Collection, MS 2272

 

Richard Stone considers the history of the bunyip character and famous stage renditions

When the final curtain fell on the lavish stage pantomime The Bunyip in 1924, it was the last theatrical representation of bunyips for over 30 years. In Aboriginal legend, the mythical creature of fear bellowed from murky waterways and stole people away in the dead of night, leaving no traces. The bunyip had originally been adopted by European settlers to warn children away from straying into the alien bush. The 1924 pantomime had used this fearsome aspect, with the bunyip as the traditional pantomime ‘baddie’, hissed and booed by eager audiences.

The next bunyips to appear before the footlights were very different manifestations. Instead of a fantastical figure blending grotesque elements of strange animals, the mid-century bunyips were more complex creatures, more human in dimension, and of a more benign disposition. The European transformation of the Aboriginal myth had advanced a step further. ‘The Bunyip represents a fresh Australian line of heroes’, critic Bruce Grant declared after seeing the bunyip character created by Peter O’Shaughnessy and Barry Humphries in the children’s musical, The Bunyip and the Satellite. Its inspiration appeared to Grant far removed from Aboriginal legend. Rather it was ‘the Australian relation of Harlequin, Pierrot, Joey, Touchstone and, even, Lear’s Fool … a delicate hero, a courteous, gay, troubled creature … the sad white face framed with a gumleaf tiara’.

Peter O’Shaughnessy, now living in England, was a theatrical dynamo in Melbourne theatre of the 1950s, combining the roles of actor, director and writer. He provided alternative, serious, even subversive, theatre. Working on shoestring budgets, he formed his own companies, gathering around him artists such as Clifton Pugh and Arthur Boyd to create sets and costumes. However, it was the collaboration with the young Barry Humphries that gave ‘Melbourne its most stimulating and provocative theatre for a considerable time’, according to critic Robert Burns.

The recent acquisition by the National Library of a collection of manuscripts, cuttings and photos from Peter O’Shaughnessy provides an opportunity to examine this rich period of Australia’s cultural history and some of the figures involved. The collection complements other important resources located in the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne.

The Bunyip and the Satellite Program, Sydney season, Independent Theatre, May 1958

The Bunyip and the Satellite
Program, Sydney season, Independent Theatre, May 1958
PROMPT Collection

In 1957, O’Shaughnessy planned a production of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion for December, in tandem with a children’s play to be performed at matinees. This tactic was, he said, ‘to insure myself financially’.  Part of the idea for a bush story involving a bunyip came from Frank Dalby Davison’s book Children of the Dark People in which Old Man Bunyip is a wise guardian of the bush. After rejecting various scripts, O’Shaughnessy, Humphries and two radio scriptwriters, Jeff Underhill and Don Whitelock, produced their own script, which became The Bunyip and the Satellite. Local Melbourne composer Val Fawcett wrote the music. The story involves Sam, a swaggie, his bushland animal friends, and a bunyip. A malevolent Bush Fire Spirit (a dancing role) steals a flame from the camp fire and threatens a bush fire, aided by Melbourne’s notorious summer north wind. Out of the confusion, the Bunyip suggests a solution—the children in the audience all blow hard and whip up a south wind to defeat the Bush Fire Spirit, which is banished to become a satellite in the sky. The show is a clever mix of myth, singing and dancing bush creatures and contemporary events—in October 1957 the Russians had captured the imagination of the world with the successful launch of the Sputnik I satellite. The musical premiered at the National Theatre in Eastern Hill, an inner southern suburb, two days after Christmas Day, 1957. O’Shaughnessy directed both Pygmalion and the bunyip musical. As well, he played Henry Higgins in the Shaw play. Barry Humphries played the Bunyip, and Colonel Pickering in Pygmalion.

Clifton Pugh, Peter O'Shaughnessy as Hamlet, 1961

Clifton Pugh 1924-1990
Peter O'Shaughnessy as Hamlet 1961
oil on masonite 121.2x90.7cm
Pictures Collection, R11462

The children’s show was a hit, and Humphries’ performance as the Bunyip widely praised. O’Shaughnessy himself wrote, ‘Barry’s performance as The Bunyip was the finest and most touching he had ever given in the theatre, and the character very close to his secret heart.’ Humphries himself described his creation as a ‘prancing bird-like clown with a falsetto that inevitably got huskier after twelve performances a week’. In an interview in the Australian magazine Theatre in 1960, Humphries went further by linking the bush creature with another of his recent creations, the suburban denizen Edna Everage.

I love the part of Bunyip. He’s a sort of a clown, like the fool in Lear. As a matter of fact the Bunyip wore a Lear-fool’s costume painted up. I just stood up and Arthur Boyd painted colours all over me. I became a canvas … I notice Mrs Everage sometimes behaves in a slightly Bunyippy way, particularly when she goes off after taking a curtain—sometimes she gives a spasmodic leap, which I subsequently recognize as a rather bunyippy trait.

Edna Everage had been gestating in Humphries’ repertoire over the previous three to four years. She had begun with Humphries satirising local women dignitaries encountered during a tour of a production of Twelfth Night in rural Victoria. With O’Shaughnessy’s encouragement, the character had developed considerably. By coincidence, this happened in parallel with the evolution of the Bunyip. In fact, on two memorable occasions, the Bunyip and Edna shared the same stage—in a revue at the Wangaratta Festival in 1958, and at a testimonial performance in Melbourne in early 1959.

Edna aside, the’ bunyip character possessed a life of its own. Humphries performed a segment in the Moomba Festival of 1958, the same year that a bunyip float was included in the Moomba Parade. Unlike Humphries’ sensitive creation, the Moomba Parade bunyip was a giant Disneyfied puppy dog-like hybrid called Billo. Humphries also performed in a Channel 7 children’s television series featuring a bunyip character.

The Bunyip and the Satellite toured to Sydney in May 1958 for the school holidays, where it appeared as a matinee attraction at the Independent Theatre. Humphries played the Bunyip again, but not as well as in Melbourne, according to O’Shaughnessy. Waiting for Godot played at night, with Humphries and O’Shaughnessy repeating their roles. Barry Humphries left Australia in early 1959, beginning a long, semipermanent stay overseas. Until success and other preoccupations intervened, Humphries maintained contact with O’Shaughnessy through correspondence, which included nurturing theatrical bunyips for a while longer.

Mark Strizic. Portrait of Barry Humphries 1968

Mark Strizic
Portrait of Barry Humphries 1968
gelatin silver photograph on fibre-based paper; image 14.5 x 22 cm
Pictures Collection, P523/2/R
nla.pic-an12153396

Buoyed by the success of The Bunyip and the Satellite, O’Shaughnessy wrote another musical for children. Mumba Jumba and the Bunyip was staged by the Children’s Theatre Guild at the New Theatre in Melbourne in early December 1959. Humphries supplied lyrics by mail from London for several songs in the show. For a revival in Melbourne, 12 months later, Humphries was still involved enough to apologise for not finishing more lyrics. Humphries also wrote of the possibility of the bunyip musicals being staged in London, with himself reprising the Bunyip role. He alludes to the prospect of a reading for Joan Littlewood, the legendary director of London’s Mermaid Theatre. However, nothing eventuated. Humphries’ career was burgeoning with roles in West End shows, and with the success of his own shows featuring Edna Everage, Sandy Stone, et al. Bunyips faded from his theatrical family. However, they remained important enough for him to use ‘Bunyip’ as the title of a chapter in his autobiography, More Please (1992), where he gives his version of his involvement with bunyips on stage.

The bunyip character in Mumba Jumba and the Bunyip continues the characteristics of the earlier creature, but takes the transformation of the Aboriginal legend further. O’Shaughnessy states that ‘primarily his ancestry is to be found in theatrical tradition’. Other sources of inspiration include Papageno from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The Aboriginal myth is further inverted when O’Shaughnessy continues, ‘His dilemma springs from the fact that he is stigmatised with an entirely unearned reputation … [as] … a fearsome monster who haunts the creeks and swamps of Australia.’ In contrast, the figure of fear and loathing in the new musical is the Mumba Jumba, a ‘wicked witch doctor … playing on the superstitions of the Dark People’. This figure is related to another Aboriginal legend, the evil Djinboon that guards the cave where the sun goes to sleep. He has the power to stop the sun from rising. A note in a program from 1960 continued the story-line with a strong pacifist message:

And there are some white men living now who hate life so much that they would like to wipe out the Trees and the Plants, and the Birds and the People with bombs. And these men too, would like to stop the sun from shining.

In one version of the script, the Djinboon joins with Eucoblast, an American intent on detonating the bush for land development. After a fight with the Mumba Jumba, the Bunyip and goodness triumph, and the sun and the bush are saved.

Mumba Jumba and the Bunyip enjoyed an extended life as a popular children’s musical, playing seasons in most capital cities in the early 1960s. New productions appeared at the 1964 Adelaide Festival of Arts, at St Martin’s Theatre in Melbourne (1965), and at the New Theatre in Sydney (1968). The O’Shaughnessy Papers show that, as recently as 2001, he reworked the musical for possible production, including changing the title to Djinboon and the Bunyip.

The transformation of the bunyip on stage by O’Shaughnessy and Humphries from the fearsome pantomime figure to a sympathetic creature is well documented in the O’Shaughnessy Papers in the Library’s Manuscript Collection. One example is contained in a script of Mumba Jumba and the Bunyip, with a song sung by the Koala character—

There’s a special kind of tree that I eat for my tea,
The bark is as smooth as smooth can be,
And to these gums the Bunyip comes
And writes on the bark his homework sums …
If you look very closely you can see
Why these gum trees are called scribbly.

As well as creating a new legend about scribbly gums, one thing is clear—the bunyip has been domesticated!

RICHARD STONE is a former National Library staff member. He is currently a consultant on ephemera and performing arts resources

More about Peter O'Shaughnessy

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