History of Georgy Girl - The Seekers Musical
Four years ago, highly credited Film, TV and Stage writer Patrick Edgeworth, began work on a stage musical based on Judith Durham and The Seekers. Never before told for the stage, Georgy Girl is the story of Australia’s iconic and most internationally successful group, The Seekers. Patrick Edgeworth was ideally placed to write the story as his brother Ron was married to Judith for twenty five years.
In 2011 Patrick was working with producer Richard East on a feature film and told him he had another project. It was a musical based on Judith Durham’s life with The Seekers and would he have a read? As Richard was one of the originating producers of the Abba musical Mamma Mia! he had seen numerous scripts of musicals and was happy to take a look. Richard felt it definitely had potential. After nearly two years of various changes and drafts, the musical became not just about Judith but all the Seekers.
Patrick and Richard felt the piece was strong enough to share and Richard suggested to Patrick that his friend Dennis Smith, who had great success with Dusty - The Original Pop Diva based on the life of Dusty Springfield, would be a good person to become involved. Dennis knew all The Seekers and he and Athol Guy were close friends as they had worked together in television in Melbourne before The Seekers were even formed.
Patrick invited Dennis to a reading of the script at his home which Judith also attended. Dennis liked the script and It was after this that Richard and he agreed to co-produce Patrick’s musical.
In July 2013 Gary Young directed, along with Musical Supervisor Stephen Amos, a table top reading of the script with a group of top musical theatre performers. Richard and Dennis felt the reading was successful enough to take the next step which was the production of a workshop presentation. This was done in August 2014 and the response from the audience at the presentation was extremely favourable.
Convinced by this reaction and subsequent feedback, Richard and Dennis decided to proceed with the production of Georgy Girl - The Seekers Musical and it will have its world premiere in The Seekers home town of Melbourne at Her Majesty’s Theatre in December.