The Story

A Musical Farce

All Above Board is a musical farce in which the audience should be whistling the songs and tapping their feet as they leave the theatre. The show is set in the 1970’s in and around Hurlingham College, a prestigious, independent school for young ladies. Hurlingham’s Principal and staff are faced with the dilemma of having to find a few willing young men they can temporarily pass off as male students! The young men are needed to convince the Chairman of the Board that the planned co-educational policy has been put into action – but it hasn’t! The recruitment and training of the young men is the basis of the farcical, mad-cap antics that take place in this original and refreshing musical.

Members of the staff eventually come up with a most unlikely group of “boys” – the philandering husband of the deputy principal, the boyfriend of the physical education teacher, a male stripper, a studious medical student and Phil, a young man on holiday. Combine these characters with Hurlingham’s dotty principal and a group of curious girl students, and you have a show that gives two hours of fun and laughter to audiences of all ages.

The History

Written by Hal Davies with music by Mike Eastman, All Above Board premiered in 1992 in Darlington, Western Australia, and went on to win the 1992 Western Australian Finley Award for Best New Musical. Since then the show has been staged many times by various schools and community theatre groups in Western Australia and Victoria.

Two songs from the show have been recorded by Simon Gallaher and Julie Anthony, including a version of the show’s love ballad One Last Time which was arranged and recorded in 2001.