Can You Imagine?

By the end of March 1981 plans were well under way for Concordia’s production of the musical version of Peter Pan. There was an air of excitement and anticipation in the school community, and 174 students had applied for a part or a role backstage. But just as musical auditions were completed and the date for the first rehearsal was set, an unexpected disaster struck. The overseas agents for Peter Pan refused Concordia’s application for performance rights.
The production team refused to give way to panic and despair and immediately considered alternatives. It was decided to create an entirely new musical around the many original songs already composed. Can You Imagine? was a fantasy adventure set in a modern musical style with a cast of nearly 80 students and teachers. The script and much of the music was written by staff members Peter Westhorp and Peter Schmidt, together with Robin Mann of Kindekrist fame and renowned musician Tim Sexton.  The pressure was intense and the deadlines unavoidable, but the process was speeded up by the use of a word processing program on the very basic and bug-riddled computer built in the College AV department. As soon as the last revision to the script was printed, the computer crashed, never to run again.

Can You Imagine? introduced the audience to many colourful and familiar characters from nursery rhymes and folk tales such as Cinderella, Punchinello, Sinbad, Aladdin and Little Boy Blue. The heroine, Mary, is a straightforward girl who becomes trapped in this bizarre world of characters quite beyond her understanding.

The show featured a number of very intricate technical effects, including a witch with exploding fingernails. Although some of the performances suffered a few memorable glitches – a poor sound system fixed only on the last night, fireworks that failed to ignite and a theatre trap-door which had been built over - packed audiences greeted this unique show with enthusiasm.