The Prize for Best Music Theatre Script: Winner and Shortlist 2008

This is the first year of the Musical Theatre Prize, and the entries were varied both in style, subject matter and standard. For a form that usually steers towards the light-hearted there was a strangely high percentage of stories with dark happenings – one child murder, two references to September 11 and three trials of various women offenders ending in at least two hangings!

Judges: Guy Noble (Convenor), Robyn Archer and Robert Dessaix

Winner

The winner of the 2008 Prize for Best Music Theatre Script is:

• The Wild Blue
  Music, lyrics and book by Anthony Crowley (St Martins Theatre)

Shortlist

	The Hanging of Jean Lee Libretto by Jordie Albiston and Abe Pogos Composed by Andrée Greenwell Based upon the verse history by Jordie Albiston (Green Room Music with The Studio, Sydney Opera House) The Hanging of Jean Lee is the story of the last woman hanged in Australia. Based on a verse history by Jordie Albiston, the musical is constructed as a series of songs linked by a narrator, which reduces expectation of melodrama and avoids having to over-dramatise. The music is edgy - jazz meets Kurt Weill - and given the verse background of the piece, there are many wonderful and pithy lyrics.
	The Wild Blue - WINNER Music, lyrics and book by Anthony Crowley (St Martins Theatre) From The Skydiver to The Man Who Loved Cows, all of the characters in Wild Blue are concerned with a core metaphor - the fear to jump into the void. This challenging musical theatre piece has strong and poetic lyrics, music of a variety of styles and bracing themes approached from unexpected angles. The judges felt that this piece left room for the imagination of the audience and had genuinely moving moments.
	Crossing Live Words by Matthew Saville Music by Bryony Marks (Chambermade) A funny, cleverly constructed opera/musical that takes a serious tilt at the sins of contemporary populist media. The clarinet-accompanied speech of Paula Day captures perfectly the sing-song intonation of a TV current affairs host. This piece has strong contemporary music, a complex audio soundscape, crisp dialogue and lyrics. It examines the morality of our modern media in an uncomfortably humorous way.