Vale

Falzon had appeared in a number of Australian and international musical theatre productions, including Evita in which he played Magaldi in the Opera Australia/John Frost production in 2018-19. This was to be his last show. 

His credits included The Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore with Opera Queensland in his early career, as well as War of the Worlds, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Rock of Ages, as well as reprising his We Will Rock You role.

Falzon appeared in solo concerts supported by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Perth Symphony Orchestra, among others. Since 2014, he had performed alongside fellow musical theatre stars Luke Kennedy, Ben Mingay, Matt Lee and Rob Mills in the band Swing on This.

He  came to prominence when he was cast by Queen and Ben Elton to star as Galileo in We Will Rock You. He reprised the role in Japan and the UK, breaking box office records and playing the show's first-ever arena venue. His other theatrical credits include The Wharf Revue (STC), Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Floyd Collins (CRH), Rock of Ages, Side by Side by Sondheim, Chess, Jesus Christ Superstar and The War of the Worlds (Australia/NZ and UK/European arena tours).

On screen Michael played Kyle in the BBC1’s The Wright Way, Jose DeSousa in Blue Heelers (ITV and Network 7) and has performed live with Queen in an ACA TV special and on The Late Late Show (RTE). His concerts include The Music of Queen (Sydney Opera House, Perth Convention Centre, Hamer Hall), Swing On This (Adelaide Festival Centre, QPAC, Theatre Royal, Perth Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House) and Painted From Memory – The Music of Bacharach and Costello (CRH, Australian tour) with further engagements as a soloist in English National Ballet’s Strictly Gershwin (QPAC, QSO & Queensland Ballet) and A Friday Night at The Opera at London Coliseum (BBC Concert Orchestra for BBC Radio2).

Along with I Dreamed a Dream - Hit Songs of Broadway for ABC Music, Falzon recorded the lead role in Atomic - A New Rock Musical in NYC, produced by Steve Margoshes (Fame, Tommy) and returned to New York in November to lend his vocals to the world premiere of Get Jack a new musical by Damien Gray, composed by Grammy Award nominee, Kip Winger.

He is survived by his wife, violinist Jane Cho.

The words of publicist Ian Phipps make a fitting tribute to Michael's life "Vale Michael Falzon," he wrote. "You fought valiantly until the last, my friend. Your beaming smile, huge talent and incredible positivity will be missed by so many friends, family and fans. We are the better for having known you."

An enthusiastic smoker early in life, she succeeded in banning smoking from Labor Party conferences in Sydney Town Hall. And, after one celebratory night, she pedalled naked on an exercise bike in the NSW Parliament House gymnasium, while fellow disrobed women swam and lounged about.

Tessa Mallos was born in Nanango, near Kingaroy, Queensland, exactly nine months after the marriage of her parents, Michael Mallos and Chrysanthy Aroney. The family settled in Kogarah two years later, running a milk bar in Sylvania.

An only child, Tessa was eight when she won a public speaking  honours award from London’s Trinity College of Music, through a Sydney examination. She earned certificates for piano and for lifesaving before taking her school Leaving Certificate at Moorefield Girls High.

Mallos received her diploma from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1963. Soon after, she played in the Old Tote Theatre’s very first production, Dark of the Moon.

Noel Coward’s advice that Mrs Worthington should not put her daughter on the stage – “the struggle’s pretty tough” – was still sound  in 1963 but Mallos played in Reedy River, a Moliere farce and Mona Brand’s Our Dear Relations at the New Theatre and J.M.Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World at the Old Tote, with Jeanie Drynan and Carmen Duncan.

Among her television credits, were the ABC’s 1965 adaption of George Johnston’s novel My Brother Jack, which featured Ed Devereaux. Long-term employment came with the J.C.Williamson production of the musical Funny Girl, igh playing the dresser to Jill Perryman’s Fanny Brice. It toured Australia for 18 months from 1966.

Returning to the New Theatre, Mallos narrated On Stage Vietnam, a satire of performance, song and film to meet protest over the war. The New also cast her as Natasha in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, with Arthur Dignam as Andrei. She had a part in the Australian TV version of the Tony Hancock Show, cut short when the English comedian killed himself.

Mallos went to London in 1969, surviving with casual work but thriving on visits to theatres in England, through Europe to Moscow. She watched Laurence Olivier as Shylock, opposite Joan Plowright’s Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Paul Schofield’s Uncle Vanya, Ian McKellen’s Richard II, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Judy Dench,  Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay, Glenda Jackson and Helen Mirren.

Back home, she played in Chekhov’s The Seagull, co-directed A Race Odyssey, an allegory on race in Australia, and turned increasingly to politics. An Actors Equity delegate at the 1973 ACTU Congress, she called for an equal minimum wage for men and women.

She was to marry Tony Reeves, journalist and Sydney City alderman, in 1980, after they had lived together for a decade. They made a formidable, volatile couple, confronting Labor’s Right as well as conservative forces and developers. After Labor leader Barrie Unsworth advised Mallos, in full cry at a NSW party conference, to “go back to the fish and chip shop”, she presented him on stage with the said dish, wrapped in newspaper. In 1983, she convened a Sydney march by 50,000 people for nuclear disarmament.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had appointed her to the Theatre Board of the Australian Council for the Arts. She became a part-time member of the Equal Opportunities Tribunal and member of the National Population Council. As income from acting dried up, she worked with Centrelink.

Diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 1996, she expected to live for three months. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and early stem cell treatment followed. As her cancer metastasized, she became an activist for advanced cancer sufferers, helping to launch the National Breast Cancer Council’s guidelines on the subject, in 2001.

Tessa Mallos’s last three months of life became a last 20 years of well-lived life. Although long separated from Reeves, they remained married when he died in 2013. Just before her death, she moved satisfyingly to the nursing home where her mother, Chrys, survives her.

Tony Stephens  

After his schooldays at Adelaide High, Ron picked up work as a dental technician. But his heart was in the radio plays he would perform in the evenings on 5DN's Radio Canteen and in meeting Lorraine most lunchtimes on the banks of the Torrens above North Terrace, where they would sit on the grass and hold hands while he quoted Shakespeare sonnets. All the time, of course, his cricket career also progressed and in 1953 he was opening the batting for South Australia and dreaming of the Australian test team. New dreams emerged, however, when the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre played in Adelaide while on tour through Australia. Acclaimed English actor Anthony Quayle was managing the Company on that tour and he held limited auditions in the various capital cities. Ron was lucky enough to gain an audition spot and even luckier to be offered a contract to sail to England and join the Company at Stratford-Upon-Avon.

It was a fork in the road. Acting or cricket. With encouragement from his father to follow his new dream, Ron decided he couldn't pass up the golden opportunity to improve his acting and learn from the best in the world. He sailed for England and left first class cricket behind, but soon found himself on stage with Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Dame Edith Evans and Dame Peggy Ashcroft among many others. After a year or so in Stratford he scored a small raise and immediately wrote to Lorraine saying they could now afford - just - to live in Stratford together. Lorraine followed Ron to England in 1956 and they were married in Stratford on March 10th. His days with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre culminated in the now legendary tour of Russia in 1958 at the height of the Cold War.

But his desire was always to strengthen Australian theatre, and the following year he and Lorraine and their young daughter Lyn returned to our sunburnt country - but they settled in Sydney, not Adelaide. Ron immediately joined the Elizabethan theatre trust, played Alf Cook in the world premier of Alan Seymour's iconic hit The One Day of the Year and bought a family home in Homebush - although on the mortgage documents he had to declare himself a dental technician as loans to actors were rarely approved. In 1963 Robert Quentin phoned to say he was starting The Old Tote Theatre Company on the UNSW campus and invited Dad to star in the first production - which was Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and also featured a young John Bell. It was the beginning of a long association with The Old Tote and nearly thirty years of almost continual work. He was also in the first production staged at the new Parade Theatre in 1969 and the two of the three productions (in repertory) that the Old Tote staged to open the Opera House in 1973. While on stage in the evenings Ron also squeezed in many television roles, notably as Dr Redfern in the ABC's The Outcasts (1962), and as Adam Suisse in The Stranger (1964) which has been re-mastered this year and is currently having a revival run on iView!

Ron received an MBE for Services to the Arts in 1974, but kept working at breakneck speed on stage, television and radio. Memorable roles included Jock in David Williamson's hugely successful The Club (1977), which transferred to London after a sell-out tour of Australia. Then in 1981 came his Big Daddy for the STC's production of Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, and his Chebutykin for Aubrey Mellor's breathtaking production of Three Sisters for Nimrod.

Ron played many roles for Nimrod, the STC, Marian Street Theatre and the QTC throughout the 80s and 90s and even expanded into musicals in the 1990s enjoying roles in Hello Dolly and My Fair Lady. In the 00s his status grew as a tribal elder, taking smaller roles in many Bell Shakespeare productions but always mentoring younger cast members with tips and anecdotes from the vast menagerie of actors he'd worked with over the years. He often quipped that if he were ever to write a memoir he’d probably title it Leading Ladies I Have Known. During the course of his life Ron also served many years on the Board of NIDA and two terms as Governor of the Actors Benevolent Fund.

As busy as he was, Ron also spent countless patient hours with his family, sharing his trademark laughter, tolerance and kindness with his cherished wife, children and grandchildren as often as possible. In the late 80s he and Lorraine became members of the Sydney Swans and devoted spectators of their team as often as possible. Sitting in the MCG and cheering the Swans to a premiership in 2005 was a highlight of the decade. 

His final television performance was recording Fish's voice-over for Screentime's 2010 mini-series adaptation of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet. In 2012 he received an AM for Services to the Arts, and the same year he also received the Actors Equity Lifetime Achievement Award. His final stage role was an acclaimed performance in the STC's production of Michael Frayn's Noises Off in 2014 at the Opera House - where he celebrated his 85th birthday at the end of the run. He never officially retired, although in his final years he would declare himself sadly unavailable if approached for a role. 

He and Lorraine stayed constant lifetime partners, going to concerts together, seeing plays, signing up for weekly educational lectures at the AGNSW, watching every game of cricket televised and never missing a Swans game - either live or on TV. Ron passed his 90th birthday in fine fettle, but in June last year fell very ill. After months in hospital he finally made it home in January this year, but with little strength left. He died in his sleep, in bed, at home, overlooking his beloved garden in the early hours of Feb 11th

Leo took to his new position with enthusiasm, often visiting grant recipients to check on their welfare.  It was only when he started to experience difficulties with his speech at the monthly meetings that he began to realise there might be something wrong with his health. He sought medical advice and was diagnosed with progressive aphasia, a disease that robs patients of their ability to communicate. Leo struggled to fulfil his duties, often relying on the help of then Treasurer Bill Young, whom he regarded as a dear friend, but it became clear that he was going to have to resign. He did so in 2015, with great regret, but the travel from his home in Leura to Redfern was becoming too much for him.

Leo’s disease progressed so he had to go into care for the last few months of his life. He died with his family around him on 4 November 2018, a couple of weeks before his eighty-second birthday.

Leo’s funeral was held at Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens on 8 November. Chairman John Gregg represented the Fund and Bill Young was also present. It was a full house for Leo, standing room only.

Maggie Dence, a long-serving committee member with the ABF had this to say about her time working with Leo, ‘I don’t think he was ever anything but calm and gentle with us all (and his patience must have been tried on several occasions!)’.  Lee Young, another former board member wrote, ‘Leo was loved - a true gentleman’.

Leo is survived by his two daughters, Belinda and Yolande and his four beloved grandchildren. Sadly missed by his brother Peter and sister Noeline..

On returning to Sydney his more than 40-year career took off. He was seldom out of work: mainly theatre, but TV (many, including continuing rôles) and film too, supplemented by extensive voice- over. (He was uncommonly well-spoken.) His more than 90 theatre rôles included twenty for Nimrod, twelve for the STC, twelve for Bell Shakespeare (of which he was an Associate Artist), and work for most of the country’s leading companies (including Opera Australia, STC of SA, QTC, Ensemble, Marian Street, Island Th. Co., and Sport for Jove), and in all states. He loved Shakespeare: his Jaques, Polonius, and Shylock were particularly memorable. He won a Green Room Award for his performance in Torch Song Trilogy. 

Robert gave much to the profession. For some years he was on the committee of the Actors Benevolent Fund; he was politically engaged; he mentored younger colleagues.

Robert’s last rôle was as the Scottish hotel manager in The Judas Kiss. His subtlety and restraint, his accent, the detail of his characterization, all were superb. It was a performance that would have graced any stage in the world. It was only a matter of days before he had to call in sick for the first time in his career, then days later to withdraw. He was a great believer in ‘Dr Theatre’, the belief that if you go on sick, the show will put you right. But he needed stronger medicine. It was the beginning of a steady decline that lasted more than a year.

An actress friend wrote: ‘I did not know him well, but whenever we met I would feel warmed by the sun’.

He is survived by Barry, and by his sister, nephew, and niece.

- Terence Clarke