A-Flat Minor: The Beaconsfield Mine Disaster: A Musical

TO Australia where Beaconsfield: A Musical in A-Flat Minor will debut in Melbourne tomorrow night.

Miner Larry Knight was killed in a rockfall at the mine on Anzac Day 2006, while Brant Webb and Todd Russell were trapped for 14 days.

It’s terrific show, if a little slow in parts…

Mr Russell tells us:

“(I feel) disgusted, really, in the way they’re going about it and what they’re going to call it,” he said on ABC radio.

“When they’re calling it ‘A-flat Minor’ it’s appalling I think, just a lack of respect for the Knight family. It’s better off being left alone, people are trying to get along with lives, trying to move forward, and they just keep using this tragedy of ours.”

Everyone’s critic. What about the show?

The promotional material for the 50-minute musical describes it as “the feel-good piss-take of the year … it’s scathing, silly and entirely patchy”.

Mike mine a comedy club. Are the BGs doing the theme song?

Australian Workers Union (AWU) national secretary Paul Howes called the musical distasteful.

“The Anzac Day mine collapse killed one person and trapped for 14 days two other miners - but the playwright admits he has used Beaconsfield merely to attract media attention and attract greater audience numbers, that’s sick,” Mr Howes said.

At the coal face of art:

Creator Dan Ilic, who travelled to Beaconsfield for research, said the musical focused more on the media circus around the event than the miners themselves.

“I was actually absolutely astonished, as many Australians were, about the media coverage of the event, and how quite often insensitively the media was constantly barraging not only the survivors when they came out, but the townspeople during the event itself,” Mr Ilic said on ABC radio.

Ilic said he felt the show it treated Mr Knight’s death respectfully.