Book and Lyrics

Castro’s Children is the fourth of Peter Fitzpatrick’s musicals to be professionally staged. It has had a frustrating journey to its Premiere season, with three seasons in Melbourne cancelled due to Covid in 2021-2, and another in New York scuttled when the New York Music Theatre Festival went bankrupt in 2019!

Peter’s previous shows are flowerchildren – the Mamas and Papas story, which followed a sellout season at Theatre Works in 2011 with a six-week run at the Comedy Theatre in 2013, Life’s a Circus (2009) and CrossXRoads (2016); the latter two were written in collaboration with composer Anthony Costanzo.

Peter has extensive experience as a writer in other genres: as a novelist, he has published the crime-novels-with-a-twist Death in the Back Pocket (with Barbara Wenzel, 1995), Promontory (2001), and, most recently, Mayo Street (2023); in cinema, Peter’s credits include Hotel Sorrento (for which he won an AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, 1995) and Brilliant Lies (1996); as a biographer, he is the author of Pioneer Players: The Lives of Louis and Hilda Esson (1995) and The Two Frank Thrings, which won the National Biography Prize in 2013.

In a previous life, Peter lectured in English and was Foundation Head of Performing Arts at Monash University, where he directed twenty-four productions of plays and musicals with students, and published a number of books and articles on Australian theatre.

For Castro’s Children, Peter has written book and lyrics, in collaboration with Melbourne composer Simon Stone.

Music

Simon is a Melbourne-based pianist, musical director and composer/arranger.  He has played keyboard in the orchestras for the Melbourne seasons of “Phantom of the Opera”, “Les Miserables”, “Chicago”, “Sunset Boulevard”, “Showboat” and “Dr Zhivago”, and has worked in the showbands on the m/s Sunbird (Sun Cruises), m/v Rotterdam (Holland America Line), m/v Galaxy (Celebrity Cruises) and m/v Mercury (Celebrity Cruises).  

Simon studied piano with Associate Professor Stephen McIntyre at the University of Melbourne and graduated with the award for the best final year student.  As a student, he recorded a concerto with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for ABC-FM. 

Simon currently teaches piano and VCE Music at Peninsula Grammar in Mt Eliza.

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