I cannot stop slapping my knee. Talk about bad taste. When playwright Dan Ilic decided he wanted to do a musical comedy about the media circus surrounding the 2006 Beaconsfield mine disaster, he figured that he needed to come up with a catchy title. And boy did he ever.

For those that don’t recall, Wikipedia says “on Tuesday 25 April 2006, a small earthquake caused a rock fall in the Beaconsfield gold mine. Fourteen miners escaped safely, one miner, Larry Knight, was killed, and the remaining two, Todd Russell and Brant Webb, were trapped in a shaft approximately one kilometre underground. The two trapped miners were found alive five days later on Sunday 30 April. Rescue operations continued for nearly two weeks until the two miners were freed on Tuesday 9 May.”

So what did Ilic name his play? He named it Beaconsfield: A Musical in A-Flat Minor. Get it?… a FLAT MINER…as in the late Larry Knight (God rest his soul). Where’s a snare drum and high hat when you need one.

The play is scheduled to open tomorrow night at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. After learning of the family’s disgust over the title of the play, Ilic renamed it “out of respect” for the family of miner Larry Knight.

“I had no idea they’d be so offended by it,” he said.