A lively First Nations musical based on a true story is about to take the stage with a cast of eight and a live band at The Q as part of an east coast tour.

Both the book and the music of Waltzing the Wilarra were written by former director of Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company David Milroy, who recreates a Perth club in the 1940s during an era of curfews and rules against interracial consorting, a place where First Nations Australians could go to simply enjoy themselves.

But the Wilarra in the title is the traditional Woiwurrung name for the Yarra River.

The show was originally staged by Milroy for Yirra Yaakin in 2013 and has now been revived by director Brittanie Shipway, with Cameron McConville as musical director.

When I catch up with actor/singer Lorinda May Merrypor, I find that Milroy’s fictional club is very much like the real-life Coolbaroo Club, which operated in Perth from 1946 to the early 1960s. It’s a great pretext for a musical and can be compared to The Sunshine Club and The Sapphires.

Merrypor, a rising luminary on the musical theatre scene after having played Juliet in the “what if” musical, &Juliet, was trained in musical theatre at the Queensland Con a few years after Canberra’s Billy Bourchier. In Waltzing the Wilarra she doubles the roles of Elsa and Old.

“I’m the singer in the club,” Merrypor says. “I’m a member of the Stolen Generation and I’ve recently located my mum who works at this club.

“She’s married to white man, Jack (Clancy Enchelmaier), back from the war and we see the effects of that in some tough conversations.”

Act two, Merrypor says, jumps to 1990 when the club faces demolition, and former members and performers gather to save it.

Elsa is by now in a wheelchair, but is prepared to break her silence on some curly questions she’s tucked under the blankets.

“It’s really cool to see her get this opportunity,” she says.

Needless to say, in both acts there’s the opportunity for her to join Lisa Maza (as Mrs Cray) and Shaka Cook (as Charlie Runaway) for numbers with titles such as Little Birdy, Tangled Tango, Criminal Love and Smoke & Mirrors. 

There’s a full cast of actors playing with a multi-instrumental band, and Merrypor says she’s particularly excited to see Cook, known for his roles in Hamilton and the movie, Top End Wedding, taking on the role of Charlie, another product of the Stolen Generation.

Elsa finds her mum not as a child but as an adult, so has to work at the relationship, creating a little bit of tension.

“There’s not just one point of view in the show, and you get to feel that there is no one evil person in it,” she says.

Waltzing the Wilarra, The Q, Queanbeyan, August 15-16.