Play with music.
Based on the cartoon character, Vasco Pyjama, created by Michael Leunig (q.v.), Ingle Knight's three dimensional theatrical adaptation seeks to remain true to the essence of the original material, using Leunig's words and characters, with additional dialogue and a narrative that binds everything together. Leunig's cartoons which contain an underlying sadness and irony in them are also often funny, poetic, bleak, whimsical and intensely human. Several songs were also incorporated into the Perth production.
The narrative finds Vasco, accompanied by his direction-finding duck (that always points towards new joys) drifting in a state of vague wonder as he attempts to circumnavigate his own world. Along the way he meets with various Leunig characters, spielers who sell the sky to birds, people who prohibit the wheeling of baby nephews through parks, doomed fortune tellers, and lovers with teapots and cups on their heads. Vasco eventually makes his way to the Toucan Club, a place of love, lust, greed and music. The club is inhabited by three women (who are all called Polly), a rapacious Maitre D' and an angel who has lost the ability to fly.
First produced by the Western Australia Theatre Theatre Co, Acting Out Theatre Company and Artrage at the Playhouse Theatre, Perth, between 11 October and 9 November 1991. Director Grahame Greene. The songs and music for the premiere production were composed by John B. Saunders (q.v.) and Phillip Griffin (q.v.).
