Bloom: Tom Gleisner made a bright musical about aged care

If Working Dog’s Tom Gleisner was a theatre producer, he would’ve been sceptical if someone approached him with a show about dancing pensioners.

“A new Australian musical is enough to send anyone running from the room, let alone a new Australian musical set in an aged care home!” he said to The Nightly.

Luckily, he didn’t have to pitch to himself and the people who he did have to persuade were open to what he had to say.

The production is Bloom, a musical stage production that was developed, workshopped and shown at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023 and is now opening under the auspices of the Sydney Theatre Company in the harbour city.

It is indeed a musical set in an aged care home, but rather than conjure up grim and despairing, Bloom is bright and hopeful.

The story is centred on a group of residents and staff in a facility whose management continue to cut back on the things that make life worth living – music, culture, leisure and dinner at a reasonable hour.

The catalyst for the show came from an article out of the Netherlands, where aged comes had started an initiatives in which university students were being offered free board in exchange for 30 hours a month of volunteer work.

It sparked something in Gleisner, who wrote the book and lyrics with music by Katie Weston. He recognised the story potential, and Bloom kicks with two new residents moving in, the older Rose, a former music teacher, and Finn, a music student who had just been kicked out of his sharehouse for failing to pay rent.

“I’ve always loved musicals and I’ve spent a lot of time visiting aged care homes over the last decade or so,” Gleisner said. “My parents, my parents-in-law were all in care and it’s such a fascinating world.

“I got to know many of the residents and the extraordinary staff who I think are among the most undervalued, underpaid and overworked people in the country. I remember thinking to myself, ‘There’s a story here to be told, and it was either going to be a musical or a Royal Commission, and I thought a musical will be easier to sell tickets to.”

The actual Royal Commission into Aged Care was established in 2018 and over two years it received more than 10,000 submissions and heard from 600 witnesses. Some of the stories that emerged were toe-curling, and was damning of a system lacking in robust governance which had failed so many residents and their families.

Bloom is not a deep dive into these problems but it does reflect the anxieties and the increased attention the sector has received in the wake of the Royal Commission as well as the challenges of the COVID years.

Bloom features a character which has no care for the mental wellbeing of the facility’s residents, focused only on profit.

“We are now paying a lot more attention to aged care and the difference between good aged care and, sadly, the terrible versions of it, than we did a decade or so ago,” Gleisner said.

“It has got better. There are still cowboys in the industry, and always, with everything, the bottom line rules. There are good ways to do things and they are cheap ways to do things, so that’s still out there, and we have to be vigilant.

“But I didn’t want to be preachy. I wanted to write a show that was fun, funny and warm, and, yes, give a gentle nudge to some of the poorer practices, but Bloom is a celebration of growing old and the possibilities that come with that.”

It’s also an advocate for intergenerational relationships. Bloom’s cast members span from their 20s and well into their 70s, and the heart of it is Finn, who moved in out of necessity but come to understand that his presence isn’t only good for residents but they have changed his worldview.

Without that connection, both generations lose out. Storytelling has always been the tradition of passing it down the line, giving us a better understanding of where we, as a people, come from, which helps inform the choices we make about what’s next.

But we need to listen.

“Everyone has a story to tell and we are all guilty of looking at someone who’s advanced in years and thinking, ‘They don’t say very much, so there they don’t have much to say’. But they do. Everyone has extraordinary histories and achievements,” Gleisner said.

“Often sadly, we only learn about it when we go to our friends’ parents’ funerals and we hear the eulogy and we go, ‘I never knew Mr Smith did that’.

“It was that realisation, of the richness of the stories behind the residents.”

Bloom is playing at the Sydney Theatre Company until May 11