Exploring mourning, inheritance and family

A new Australian Jewish musical exploring mourning, inheritance and family will have a six-performance season in Melbourne in November.

After the Flood reimagines the biblical story of Noah and the Flood through a family confronting a world that can no longer be recovered. 

The musical follows Noah, Naama and their three adult children, beginning around a family Shabbat table before Noah’s vision of a catastrophic flood turns their home into a place of frantic preparation. As the rain closes in and an Ark takes shape outside, old wounds surface and the family must confront the beliefs and inherited burdens that have kept them apart.

With music and lyrics by Melbourne composer and theatre maker Ari Jacob, and a book by Ari Jacob and Josh Gurgiel, the production brings an all-Jewish cast and creative team together, including acclaimed singer, songwriter and performer Deborah Conway as Naama, alongside Simon Starr as Noah.

Jacob’s score will be performed by a ten-piece live band, including two Iranian musicians he connected with during the recent war. The musicians will play the traditional oud and kamancheh, instruments which have helped shape the production’s music.

Jacob said the musical was about “mourning the world we have lost and searching for the glimmer of a rainbow that might come after the storm”.

“It asks what we carry from those who came before us, what we need to let go of, and what we promise to carry for one another,” he said.

The production explores the family’s competing ideas of truth as they face life and death, and considers what people choose to carry forward from previous generations.

After the Flood was commissioned with support from the Victorian Government’s Connecting Cultures program.

The season runs from November 4-9 in Melbourne. Further information is available at afterthefloodmusical.com