Megan’s our rising star

By Madeleine Murray

IT’S HARD to keep up with Kunghur local and writer Megan Albany.

In the past four years, the writer/musician has gone from workshopping her ideas at a small Uki writers’ group to writing a bestselling novel called The Very Last List of Vivian Walker. (She also worked as a reporter at the Tweed Valley Weekly along the way.)

Megan then created a show based on the book, with live music by her and guitarist extraordinaire partner Marc Mittag.

The show started as a one-off fundraiser at the Brunswick Picture House, but was so popular it has been picked up to tour the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Gasworks in Melbourne, Glen St Theatre in Sydney, and August venues to be announced in the UK.

However locals can still catch the musical event at The Star Court Theatre in Lismore on January 21, and The Regent Cinema, Murwillumbah on February 3.

All the characters in the show are performed by AACTA award-winning actor Madeleine West who has starred in Neighbours and Underbelly.

“Madeleine is such an amazing actress,” Megan told The Weekly.

“Even though I wrote the book, the first time I saw her perform the lines, I choked on what I was drinking, I was laughing so hard and then next minute, she had me breaking down into tears.

“I know most people will know her for her work on television but she actually has a background in theatre and that training really comes through in this one-woman show.

“I am still in awe of how she has brought my novel to life and of her ability to morph from one character to the next.

“One minute she is a heartbreakingly sad mother, the next minute she is a half-crazed, frustrated wife and then suddenly she transforms, so believably into an annoying man, and all without so much as a prop or a costume change.”

The darkly comic tale was snapped up by Hachette Publishing with a two-book deal.

This is almost unheard of for a debut novel. Most first-time novelists struggle to even secure an agent, a must for getting the attention of a publisher.

It’s a long, hard, well-trodden path to nowhere.

Critics loved the debut novel which made the 2020 Banjo Prize shortlist.

“The Very Last List of Vivian Walker is hilarious and moving look at the realities of terminal illness,” according to the publisher.

Liane Moriarty, creator of global hit Big Little Lies, called the book “heartbreakingly funny, unflinching.”

The Very Last List is the diary of a woman dying of cancer but still trying to get her husband to finish everyday jobs and to show he will in fact be capable of parenting their eight-year-old son once she is gone.

Somehow Megan turned this grim subject into something very funny, a tale of lists, unfinished chores, a slack husband, and a desperately hardto-leave son.

The Very Last List of Vivian Walker is on at The Regent at 7pm on Friday, February 3.