Musical wizards of Oz: partners Mathew Frank and Dean Bryant talk about their gay musical Prodigal, coming from Australia to off Broadway. (theater).

Amid the tidal wave of Australian talent sweeping American film, it's bracing to realize that only four or five original musicals have found success Down Under. But now two Aussies--young and gay, no less--are bringing their wares into the New York musical theater arena, where the show-tune audience lives. Mathew Frank and Dean Bryant--at the unusually green ages of 24 and 25, respectively--are the creators of Prodigal, the first Australian musical to be produced in New York. Says Frank: "It's pretty exciting having a musical opening in the theater capital of the world."

Set to Frank's contemporary score, which combines pop, Broadway, and vaudevillian styles, Prodigal relates the tale of Luke, a young gay man from a rural fishing town in Australia who leaves his family to seek kindred souls in Sydney. When his city-slicker boyfriend dumps him, he flounders in the drug and party scene and is forced to return to his family. "The turning point is when he returns home and has to deal with his mom, dad, and brothers," says Bryant. "There is a contrast as to how the dad reconciles his righteousness with his love for his son. It gets very dark before Luke comes back into the light."

Partners in life as well as music, Bryant and Frank met five years ago at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts during their first week of school and have been together ever since. While their own parents were musical theater fans and have been highly supportive of their sexual orientation, there are autobiographical elements in the show. "It's the world we know--kids from country towns that have to go to cities to realize their dreams," says Frank. "I have lots of friends who haven't told their parents because they are worried about it. That makes me sad for them."

After a successful production of Prodigal in Melbourne, a member of the off-Broadway York Theatre in New York heard a CD of the show and passed it on to artistic director James Morgan, who requested a reading of it in New York. That led to a booking from February 28 to March 31 in the York Theatre season. The musical riff on the biblical parable features a cast of five Broadway veterans under the musical direction of Frank.

Both Frank and Bryant think that the theme of the show reflects the lives of isolated gay men everywhere. "I think Prodigal is pretty universal in that respect, in that it is harder to be gay in a small country town than in a city, anywhere in the world," says Bryant. With a paucity of musical theater willing to deal with the gritty gay issues of coming out, Prodigal deserves applause for its boldness alone. Perhaps these 20-something artists might even prod Stephen Sondheim to step up to the plate with his first explicitly gay-themed musical.

Carman also writes for The New York Times.