BRIAN CROSSLEY, 1926-2012
Potty about part ... playing Mrs Flower Potts in Adventure Island was one of the happiest times of his life. Photo: Supplied
From an early age there was evidence of the abiding passion of Brian Crossley's life: music. As a boy he would crouch on the floor, his ear pressed to the wireless's speaker, the better to hear an orchestral concert, playing at low volume, which the other members of the family preferred not to hear.
He and his mate Graham would get on their bicycles, with a portable gramophone and up to a dozen 78 records, and go into the woods to listen to, possibly, William Walton's first symphony, young Crossley's favourite.
This was the start of a life in the theatre, with music as the dominant theme. Crossley also worked in television and played the much-loved Mrs Flower Potts on the ABC's children's program Adventure Island. Later, he directed Gilbert and Sullivan works, and serious opera.
First and foremost a musician ... Crossley was passionate about music, even as he pursued an acting career. Photo: Supplied
Brian Stow Crossley was born on October 5, 1926, in Shipley, Yorkshire, the second of two children to Harry Crossley, an engineer's draughtsman, and his wife, Minnie (nee Stow).
After school, Crossley trained at the Birmingham College of Speech and Drama and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre company, where he worked before being talent spotted in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, playing in Worcestershire.
He was asked to join the famous Gilbert and Sullivan company, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, in the chorus for the 1950-51 season and shared small named parts as the company performed on Broadway West End and on tour in England.
In 1952 he joined the West End production of Ivor Novello's last show Gay's the Word, which featured the English star Cicely Courtneidge. By 1954, Crossley was ready for a change and he arrived in Melbourne to work for the Union Theatre Repertory Company, where he performed alongside Zoe Caldwell, Fred Parslow, Ray Lawler, Joan Harris, Monica Maughan and Barry Humphries. Then came an engagement with the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, touring Australia and New Zealand in 1956.
With the arrival of television, Crossley turned his hand to acting and directing. He was a director for Crawford Productions' The Box and appeared regularly in shows such as Homicide, Division 4 and Consider Your Verdict, as well as The World of Operetta and The World of Song with Tiki Taylor, Suzanne Steele and Jon Weaving.
His best known role, however, was as Mrs Flower Potts in Adventure Island, which ran for five years and was one of the happiest periods of Crossley's life. Many of today's 40- to 50-year-olds fondly remember hurrying home from school to find out what was happening in Diddley-Dum-Diddley.
In theatre, Crossley had a particular affinity with the works of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde. A notable achievement was a production of Coward's cycle of 10 one-act plays Tonight at 8.30 for the Viaduct Theatre, Melbourne, in the 1960s.
Crossley had studied piano in England and this, with his passion for and knowledge of music, were much in evidence as he turned his attention to directing musicals and opera.
His first opera production was Orpheus and Eurydice, for the Victoria State Opera in 1968. The famous Australian mezzo-soprano Lauris Elms took the title role. Productions of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, Domenico Cimarosa's The Secret Marriage, and Joseph Haydn's L'infedelta delusa followed in quick succession.
During this time, Crossley was immersed in directing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and he developed a strong association with Australia's leading G&S player Dennis Olsen, eventually working with him in 20 productions.
Crossley directed The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Mikado and Iolanthe for the Australian Opera and was widely recognised as an Australian authority on Gilbert and Sullivan.
In 1973, he was made a director of the National Theatre's opera school and was responsible for full-scale student productions of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Britten's Albert Herring, Gian Carlo Menotti's Amelia Goes to the Ball and Puccini's Suor Angelica, among others.
Having been associated with the conductor Peter Rorke when he was the ABC's head of music in Victoria, Crossley was pleased to continue the association when Rorke moved to the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (now the University of Southern Queensland) in Toowoomba.
From 1982 to 1990, Crossley directed The Pirates of Penzance, My Fair Lady, Die Fledermaus, Orpheus and Eurydice, The Mikado and Albert Herring. He also tutored in music theatre at the university's McGregor Summer School for several years in the 1980s.
"Brian is so successful as an opera producer because he is first and foremost a musician,'' Rorke said.
''He uses music as the starting point in his production planning. If you add to this his visual imagination, his uncanny feel for matching movement to music and a meticulous approach to the all-important logistical planning, you have the secret of his success.''
One of the continuing pleasures in Crossley's life was his Sunday night "concerts".
He took delight in planning programs to entertain and inform his friends and acquaintances in the hope they would understand and share his musical passions.
They began with playing records when he was serving in an education unit of the British army towards the end of World War II and continued in Australia from the 1950s until a few weeks before his death.
His small living room would sometimes be crowded, with all the seats taken and little space between those sprawling on the floor. Over the years different cats listened in as well. Among them were Benjamin and Thomas, named after two of Crossley's heroes, Benjamin Britten and the English conductor Thomas Beecham. Lively discussion followed the music, accompanied by tea and cheese and biscuits.
There were sorrows as he grew older. His older sister, Margaret, to whom he was close all his life, died about the same time as his cherished friend the soprano Glenda Raymond and, more recently, the gifted actor Monica Maughan, who had been a dear friend since his early days with the Union Theatre Repertory Company.
Illness encroached during the last two years of Crossley's life and remaining in his own home, as he was determined to do, became a struggle. He managed one last night at the ballet with another old friend a week before he died - exactly as he wanted - in his home.
At a celebration of his life at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, Crossley's friends and colleagues remembered him with great warmth and affection and, as was fitting, farewelled him with a standing ovation.
Marian Sinclair
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