18 Eden Avenue: The perfect way to say goodbye
“It will be a very cool goodbye, but a bit weird being on the stage for the last time…. The Civic Theatre stage, there is something very special about that."
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It’s a fitting goodbye for Meadow Bodkin-Allen.
On Saturday night the Invercargill teenager will take to the Civic Theatre stage and play the role of Poppy in the show 18 Eden Avenue.
It is the show her mother Sally helped write.
Seven days later Meadow will then depart Invercargill, bound for Melbourne where she will continue to chase her theatre dreams.
Meadow has been a constant figure in the Invercargill theatre scene since playing Gretl in Invercargill Musical Theatre's production of The Sound of Music when she was just six-years-old.
She played Jane Banks in Mary Poppins when she was 10, and has featured in IMT's show Jersey Boys and most recently Mamma Mia.
After missing the first two shows because of a sprained ankle Meadow returned to play the lead role of Sophie for the remaining 10 shows.
Meadow will head to Australia this month in search of more theatre opportunities. She has her sights on breaking into the Melbourne scene which she describes as a hub for musical theatre at the moment.
“Down here we are quite limited with how much theatre we have so it will be really cool to have lots of shows to audition for constantly.
“I’ve got a pretty good performance CV from everything I’ve done down here so I’ll just wait and see what happens.”
Meadow has grown up within the Invercargill theatre scene and while she was excited about the Melbourne venture, she also acknowledged it was a big moment having to say goodbye.
The fact she gets to depart on the back of a performance in 18 Eden Avenue was an almost perfect swansong.
“It is a very special show to say goodbye with, obviously with mum writing the music and then me being a part of it is pretty special.
“It will be a very cool goodbye, but a bit weird being on the stage for the last time…. The Civic Theatre stage, there is something very special about that. It is such a beautiful theatre that I think we are very lucky to have down here.”
Mum Sally is pleased that Meadow is about to embark on her theatre progression and next chapter in life.
“I just think it’s great. It is time for her to leave and go fly away and have some fun in Australia and enjoy what that has.”
Firstly though, there’s Saturday’s 18 Eden Avenue show to sort.
Sally Bodkin-Allen and fellow Southlander Roger Gimblett actually started writing the musical 30 years ago before four years ago they decided they should finish it.
It premiered in Invercargill in 2022 at Invercargill Repertory before the Nelson Musical Theatre picked it up and performed the show earlier this year.
Both Sally and Meadow travelled to Nelson to watch the opening night.
“My favorite thing is sitting in the audience and watching the audience’s reaction to things that Roger and I have created,” Sally said.
The show is about three generations of women who live in a house which was once quite grand but now somewhat falling apart.
They take boarders into the house and the storylines become about relationships and secrets.
“It’s quite amazing for six characters how many intertwining love stories there are,” Sally said with a laugh.
The show features a live eight-piece band and six outstanding musical theatre performers.
Four of the six cast have returned from the 2022 premiere of 18 Eden Avenue.
They are Meadow Bodkin-Allen, Craig Waddell, Liv Cochrane, and Julie Smith.
Sam McGregor - a local upcoming talent in Invercargill musical theatre - and Dunedin’s Ben Johnson are the newcomers to the show.
The show is hard on the heels of the busy season of Mamma Mia! at the Civic Theatre which both Bodkin-Allen and Waddell played lead roles in.
“It’s nice though, because you don’t really get to come out of one and go straight into another one. It feels like it is a good flow,” Meadow said.
Both Sally and Meadow are hopeful Southlanders get in behind Saturday’s one-off show and turn up in good numbers.
“We are supporting someone local who has written it. We need the community behind it and then maybe it will get picked up again somewhere else. That is kind of the plan, because we do want to keep it going,” Meadow said.
Saturday’s show at the Civic Theatre will start at 7.30pm with tickets available through Ticketek.