Stage Whispers May/June 2022 edition

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 1

In This Issue

A Fairy Tale...For All Time.................................................................................. 4 Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella begins its national tour The Sound Of Australian Musicals ................................................................... 10 Three brand new local musicals have their premieres

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Suspending Disbelief ...................................................................................... 14 Magic, and the magic of theatre Tell Me Before The Sun Explodes..................................................................... 19 Playwright Jacob Parker asks, “What would you do if the world was ending?”

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The Phantom Of The Sopera ........................................................................... 20 The perils of taking the world’s most famous musical outdoors The Tempest Has Passed ................................................................................. 22 Recent floods and their impact on our theatres From Humble Beginnings - The Guild Theatre ................................................. 34 Rockdale’s little theatre celebrates 70 years

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One Day More ................................................................................................ 36 CentreStage’s Les Mis box office success hints to a bright post-COVID-19 future Staging And Theatre Tech............................................................................... 37 Our annual technical supplement

Regular Features

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Book Extract: Australia In 50 Plays

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Broadway Buzz

26

London Calling

27

Stage On Page

28

Stage Sounds

30

Stage Heritage

32

Behind The Scenes With Debora Krizak: Welcome To The Moulin Rouge!

38 What’s On

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Reviews

61

Musical Spice

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Editorial Dear theatre-goers and theatre-doers, Early in my theatrical journey, back in the 1970s, I performed with a company which was still using some makeshift lights, created from large, repurposed tin cans.

Who else remembers this sort of technical (and I use the word loosely) improvisation?

Such a far cry from the stories of sophisticated modern tech which we share in this edition, those jerry-built lights served me as a reminder of how far we’ve travelled in a short time.

The leading ladies of 9 To 5 The Musical - Marina Prior, Casey Donovan and Erin Clare - catch up on the latest Stage Whispers news.

Online extras!

Sing along with the cast of 9 To 5 The Musical. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/M9sMFjcdeHU

Technical improvisation, though, is by no means dead, as this year’s Handa Opera on the Harbour staging of The Phantom of the Opera proved.

Outdoor performances have been around since the dawning of theatre in Ancient Athens. But from the Greeks to Shakespeare, natural lighting of daytime performances was as technical as it got, using one huge solar light source.

Combine night-time outdoor performances, though, with tons of whizbang modern tech, then add Sydney’s recent deluges. But ingenuity ensured that the show (mostly) went on, as Opera Australia’s Technical Director has explained to us.

Some Queensland and northern NSW theatres were far worse off though, with floods inundating venues; some of them are still under repair as we go to press. Untouched venues in flood regions were temporarily repurposed for emergency and community uses by those in badly affected districts.

My thanks to Beth Keehn for her update on this new blow to some of our theatres, just as they were emerging from COVID-19.

In the meantime, despite the setbacks, theatre is progressively getting back on track across Australia, despite a few COVID-19 induced road-bumps along the way.

So, the best way all of us can help is to get out there and enjoy some performances.

Yours in Theatre,

Neil Litchfield Editor

CONNECT

Cover image: Shubshri Kandiah and Ainsley Melham reveal their Cinderella ballroom costumes.

Read Coral Drouyn’s interview with the two stars on page 4.

Photo: Brian Geach.

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AIRY TALE... ...For All Time

With Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella opening in Melbourne, ahead of its national tour, Coral Drouyn explores the history of the show and talks to its two young stars.

Shubshri Kandiah as Cinderella and Ainsley Melham as Prince Topher in Cinderella.

Photo: Brian Geach.

Online extras!

The cast rediscover the magic of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. youtu.be/qkUTC-7g0G4 4 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Cover Story We all grow up with fairy tales but most of us think they are “uncool” at around the same time that we discover that Santa Claus is just our parents stringing us along, and that they actually bought our Christmas presents themselves!

Most fairy tales are filled with murders, wolves or other monsters, wicked witches and enough shocks to give us nightmares for years. Of course, we learn as we grow up that they’re not real.

Except for Cinderella.

We want to believe that fairy tales can come true, a poor servant girl (sic) can marry a prince, and dreams can come true. And if we were in danger of forgetting, along comes Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry, who defy all the rules, and...well you know the rest. In fact, princes marrying commoners is far more...er...common than you might think. Life really does imitate art sometimes.

I grew up with Cinderella being the most popular pantomime in the UK. I would watch from the wings as my Dad bewitched the audience as Buttons, the valet in love with Cinders.

That was a very different version of the story, where the stepsisters were ‘ugly’ (and in drag) and the prince was Charming.

Rodgers and Hammerstein knew the universal appeal of Cinderella way back in 1957, when they created the show as a television vehicle for the superb talents of Julie Andrews, fresh from My Fair Lady. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. The fairy tale came alive, even in black and white.

To save you counting, that was sixtyfive years ago and most of us reading this were not even born then. And if that seems like a very long time ago, remember the original fairy tale was written by Charles Perrault way back in 1698. Even I wasn’t born then.

The show was re-shot for television twice more and had various regional stage productions before disappearing from stages in 1997. Is it too much to think that the marriage of Prince William to a certain Ms Middleton, a commoner, saw a revival

in the classic tale, or was it just serendipity?

Whatever the impetus, Cinderella re-emerged as a show and made its first appearance on Broadway in 2013, having been worked on all the previous year. But this was a very different production, and indeed a very different telling of the fairy tale.

Douglas Carter Beane wrote a new book for the show which fleshed out the lead characters, as well as creating several new ones. Ella is now a liberal minded girl who wants to right the injustices in the world (including her own lowly station). She has the will, but not the means. Prince Topher (short for Christopher...and it sounds more regal than “Prince Chris”) is an orphan who doubts his own ability to rule and is being kept from seeing the true pain and suffering of his subjects.

The old values system has been turned on its head, and each of them needs the other equally in order to make the necessary changes to the world they (and all of us) want to live in. If that sounds corny then we all need to eat more corn!

The truth is that fairy tales DO come true - one person CAN open our eyes and change our thinking if it’s the right person. We only have to look at Ukraine and a humble clown turned world hero to see that (I’m hanging out for “Volod - The Musical”).

When Cinderella finally made it to Broadway in 2013, with additional songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s bottom desk drawer, it garnered an incredible 23 award nominations, including 9 Tony nominations, winning for its sumptuous costumes.

Now, after a two year delay due to the theatre crippling pandemic, it is finally our turn. John Frost and Opera Australia haven’t wavered over the two year wait, and the show finally opens in Melbourne at the Regent Theatre on May 20 before seasons in Brisbane and Sydney.

(Continued on page 6) stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 5

(Continued from page 5)

The cast is phenomenal. The fabulous Silvie Paladino will bring the fairy godmother to life. An exceptional performer with a voice to die for, she alone would be enough reason to buy a ticket, but then there is the amazing Todd McKenney, who surely IS the personification of Music Theatre in Australia, playing the new role of the baddie Sebastian, who has control over the Prince until Cinderella steps in. Todd has been a hero and leading man in so many musicals, but I must admit I LOVE him as a villain.

He is deliciously devious. We can expect a fine acting performance from the renowned Tina Bursill, but of course all eyes will be on Ella and her prince. And what a delightful pairing this is, bringing together once more the stars of Aladdin, Ainsley Melham (as the Prince) and Shubshri Kandiah in the title role.

6 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Certainly it’s a far cry from an Arabian Prince and Princess - which was near perfect casting for both but these two exceptional young talents are determined to make these roles their own and are already deeply immersed in the folklore which has seen a French fairy tale become a renowned English pantomime and now an American musical.

It’s fair to say that despite some similarities (Ainsley is of Lebanese/ Italian descent and Shubshri is proud of her Indian heritage) their path to stardom has been very different, so it was a delight to speak to both and feel their passion for their work and this new production.

“Some stories are just universal,” Shubshri says, “and the inner journey that Ella takes speaks to every girl, no matter where she comes from. To know yourself, to reach your full potential, that’s a promise each of us should make to ourselves.”

Ainsley, a WAAPA graduate, started life in Bathurst - hardly the capital of Australian theatre. But he started dancing at two and was winning competitions in a vey short time. His mother was his main supporter but his Dad, an upholsterer who was initially against Ainsley’s path, ended up sewing his costumes.

“My Mum decided on dance classes,” he says, “and once my Dad realised that I was serious about pursuing a life in theatre, he really became my most supportive fan.

“I was incredibly lucky,” he continues. “I really thought after WAAPA I would get a job in an ensemble for a big show and start to work my way up. I was very aware that it’s a long, hard slog and not everyone makes it, and I was prepared for that, as long as I could be on stage. But then I auditioned for Hi5, not expecting much, and I got the job. It just blew me away.”

Cover Story For Ainsley it meant putting his Music Theatre dreams on hold, but there were huge benefits.

“My parents were worried about stability. Would I be able to make a living?” he explains, “and suddenly I was not only making a living, I was travelling the world, learning so much about performing, and fast-tracking my career. It was incredible.”

Ainsley not only secured the title role in Aladdin for Australia, but also played the role on Broadway and in the West End. “I’m not being modest,” he says, “but it really is all about timing, and grabbing the opportunities when they come.”

Imagine the impact on a young performer of seeing his name in lights in Times Square.

“It was surreal,” Ainsley says, “and I was acutely aware that so many talented performers never make it to Broadway, no matter how hard they work, or how talented they are.”

Aladdin was followed by the title role in Pippin, and now Cinderella.

“At least I won’t be playing the title role this time,” he jokes.

In the two year break, Ainsley pursued writing and is currently doing a degree in literature. But that’s going to have to wait once the show opens.

His long term goal is to create a major role from scratch as part of the creative process.

“It would be great if it was in a show I had had a hand in writing,” he says, “but even to be in the room, and part of that creative team would be the ultimate challenge. And then to be the first to actually play that role - I think that’s the pinnacle in musical theatre.”

Shubshri was born in Perth and that should have made WAAPA a shoo in...but “I auditioned for WAAPA three times but didn’t get in,” she says ruefully, “and maybe it’s a good thing

in that I needed to be far from home to discover myself.”

Determined to pursue her dream, Shubshri travelled all the way to Brisbane and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.

“I honestly believe it’s the quality of your training, not where you go,” she says adamantly. Brisbane is now home when she’s not working overseas.

We all know the stories of artists having to change their names to succeed and I asked her if anyone had ever suggested that she change her name to something more marqueelike and easier to pronounce.

“No, never. And I don’t think that I would ever do that, no matter what the pressure, just to make things easier for some people,” she tells me.

“I’m quite happy to be called Shoob for short though. It is a different world now, but Silvie (Paladino) told me that when she was starting out (Continued on page 8)

Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella Playing at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre from May 20, then the Lyric Theatre, QPAC from August 5, and the Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star from October 23. cinderellamusical.com.au

Kaitlyn Mayse as Cinderella in the US touring production.

Photo: Carol Rosegg.

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 7

Cover Story

Tina Bursill, Todd McKenney, Ainsley Melham, Shubshri Kandiah and Silvie Paladino.

Photo: Hugh Stewart.

back story and personality for this person in the background. Of course, that she was advised to change her this Cinderella is very different to the name. Your name should not define one I grew up hearing about, and who you are, or where you come that’s been so exciting. She starts out from. As a child, I always felt insecure but grows to realise that she different, even though I was has the power to change herself and Australian born. I was the only Indian her world. It’s a beautiful journey and girl in my school, and I wasn’t sure I can totally identify with it. There how I would fit in with the theatre really is something for everyone in this scene, I just knew I had to try,” she show.” explains. “I’m so proud of my Everyone who is still young at ethnicity, and while we still don’t have heart! enough ethnic diversity here, it Hopefully, that’s all of us! actually works in my favour when I’m For me, Cinderella will always working in other parts of the world.” mean standing in the wings of a Shubshri describes herself as a theatre at age 8 or 9 watching my “one show at a time girl”. dad play Buttons. Sadly that role “I don’t think about getting ‘star doesn’t exist any more, but I can’t roles’. I just want to keep working wait to discover my inner child all over and I love any character I’m playing,” again with Ainsley and Shubshri she enthuses. “Even when I was just leading the way. an extra in the opera I created a full (Continued from page 7)

8 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

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Three new locally written musicals, having their world premieres within weeks of each other in Sydney and Melbourne, have a capital D and an ambition to tour the country in common. David Spicer reports on the stories behind The Deb (ATYP), Dubbo Championship Wresting (Hayes Theatre) and Driftwood the Musical (Umbrella Events), and what will make them unique.

The Deb Filthy Taylah from the farm All frocked up with a boy on my arm Ready or not Gonna show em’ what I’ve got.

Set at a country town Debutantes’ Ball, The Deb, conceived and codirected by comedian Hannah Reilly, with music by Megan Washington, premiered in April at ATYP’s newly renovated home at Pier 2/3 in Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.

“I had no idea what a Deb was. I was 17 at Schoolies week in northern New South Wales when a debutante turned up in full white ball gown, gloves and tiara, smoking, and drinking a vodka cruiser,” Hannah told me.

“Oh my God, I thought. She was the scrappy Cinderella of my dreams. I asked, ‘Did you just get married?’ No, she was just back from a Deb. ‘Do you not have them in city,’ she asked?

She told me all about it and since then I have been fascinated by the whole process.

“It is uniquely Australian, much like the Melbourne Cup. We take an old-fashioned ceremony and give it our own twist.”

The lead character in the musical is high school ‘mega-dork’ Taylah.

10 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

“She lives in a town where the Debutante Ball is important - a coming-of-age event that feels like life or death. They ask her to conform to a very narrow view of what a girl should look like. She is bigger and stronger. All she wants to be is the opposite of the dainty little damsel, and she becomes an easy target for bullies who push her to the side and reject her. Just when she thinks she can’t attend, her inner-city cousin arrives and they hatch a plan to go together.”

The story appealed to actor Rebel Wilson, who is backing the production.

“Debutante Balls are incredibly old fashioned,” Hannah continued. “The ceremony dates to the 1400s in France. Even in the 1950s the Queen (stopped attending them in England because) they were a bit problematic.

“A lot of things about the balls desperately need updating (such as) same sex partners, however what is lovely is that they are a celebration of young people - of their future - which makes them feel loved, appreciated and special.

“This is particularly in areas where there is not a lot of glamour or excitement, which is why they tend to be big in rural working-class areas.

“It is no longer about having young women being ready for

marriage, but is more of a coming-ofage ceremony.”

I’m comin’ out I’m comin’ out of my shell.

You got a ball?

Well, here’s ya belle A princess in a fairy tale come true When I finally make my debut.

Hannah Reilly says local audiences love the way Australian voices sound in the musical theatre artform.

“The Australian voice is so idiosyncratic; it makes surprising musical theatre content. We all know what a British or American musical sounds like. Only in the last few years have we been making unique Australian musicals. “(The composer) Megan Washington and I both enjoy old fashioned music theatre shows where each character is unique, and so we were interested in creating a distinct sound for each of them.

“Taylah makes a scrappy Aussie Disney Princess. She has the equivalent of ‘Bonjour’ in Beauty and the Beast. She is airy and light on her feet.

“There is a bridal shop moment, which is an old-fashioned number featuring an inner repressed showgirl song.

The Deb. Photo: Tracey Schramm.

The Deb Playing until May 22 at ATYP’s theatre at Pier 2/3 in Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. atyp.com.au “The local beauty salon owner has a villainous moment, which is inspired by an 80s Bonnie Tyler goofy pop rock number.”

Hannah Reilly’s background is in stand-up comedy and she is relishing the opportunity to create a new musical in a brand-new venue which does away with “old fashioned story telling”.

“We are sticking to conventions, then breaking them to surprise the audience. There is a balance of pathos and absurdity. There is not just one villain but dual protagonists. There is a lot going on.”

Online extras!

Katelin Koprivec gives a sneak peek of “Coming Out” from The Deb. youtu.be/-4AXO0bf6b8

what do those words that mean,’ I asked?

“A suplex is where you pick up your opponent, grab and throw them behind you,” he explained.

“A piledriver (throwing someone headfirst) was outlawed in the WWE because a big star injured his neck.”

To avoid injury, the fight coach trains the wrestler on the receiving end to hit the ground with their arms to cushion the blow and avoid a back injury.

The wrestling ring floor is also lightly sprung to lessen the impact if you fall on your face.

“I have been trying to go to gym Dubbo Championship Wrestling to look sort of like a wrestler, as they Actor Aaron Tsindos is preparing are quite buffed up.” for the fight of his theatrical life. He is Being dressed in spandex means in training for the Dubbo Wrestling there will be nowhere to hide any of League. When I spoke to him, he was his bits and pieces.

Aaron’s character is Perfect Ten preparing for his first bout of coaching.

Ken, the only non-Australian in the mythical Dubbo Wrestling League.

“Ken got fired in America for Its 2am, there is no-where else to go taking too many banned substances.

The pub is shut Muscle bound men chock full of It is implied that Dubbo is the only place that will hire him. He is aggro committed to the craft and does not A paradise for your average Joe understand that it is fake.”

Second only to the footy show.

But it is fake, I ask?

“Wrestlers still get hurt. Back in A long-time fan of wrestling, Aaron was up on the lingo, telling me the day it was pretty full on, and they used real thumb tacks to jump onto. his fight coach would help him practise a suplex and a piledriver. ‘Er, They would jump onto tables which

had break points, but they were still real tables.

“We deal with that in the show. It is not as real as it seems, but it still takes a toll on the body.

“I grew up watching WWF wrestling all the time. I used to love watching it every week.”

The premiere production, originally scheduled for 2020, has been postponed several times due to COVID-19. It is the brainchild of writing and composing brothers Daniel and James Cullen.

The silver lining has been that in the extended downtime, the Hayes Theatre has released a concept album for the musical featuring David Campbell, Lucy Durack, iOTA and Eddie Perfect.

Joe Accaria, musical director and arranger of the album, used remote recording technologies.

“During COVID-19 I built a recording studio in my garage so I could be in Sydney and monitor others interstate in real time by Zoom and audio programs, which allow you to collaborate on the fly.

“It is sufficient for a musical, although you would not try it for a symphony orchestra.”

(Continued on page 12) stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 11

Zoe Iannou as Rose and Aaron Tsindos as Ken in Dubbo Championship Wrestling.

Photo: Phil Erbacher.

Dubbo Championship Wrestling Playing at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre from May 12. hayestheatre.com.au

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(Continued from page 11)

So how do you replicate a chorus sound using artists who are remote from each other?

“I would get them to do it once, then sing it again from a different angle to the microphone and maybe with a different character in mind. The cumulative effect is that it sounds like there are more singers than are there.”

How would he describe the sound of the musical?

“A blend of Australian rock’n’roll with amazing and memorable production techniques from US as well as UK rock. A quintessential 80’s professional rock sound with an Australian accent - pub rock basically.”

The soundscape of the production will also be influenced by the wrestling ring.

“The sound of the bell is like a percussion instrument. There will be the sound of people slapping each other and bodies falling on wrestling mats. We are also putting in some comic elements akin to Looney Tunes.”

The sound of the lyrics is different too. Aaron Tsindos says, “an Australian accent can be very flat in tone and it can be tricky to round out the vowels. Most people are trained with voice placement that is more suitable to a British or US accent.

Online extras!

Driftwood is a magical story of creativity, survival, family and love. https://youtu.be/qDDetJiubkI

Driftwood.

“That is all shifting and changing.

Over last five or ten year we are embracing vocal changes. The accent in Hamilton’s hip hop sound is very different to a Les Mis sound.”

Joe Accaria loves the unambiguously Australian accent.

A favourite line for him in the musical is: Where every sunrise is the same day dawning.

A hotbed of bogans spawning “I have never heard the words bogan and spawning in the same sentence,” he said. The song has heart and also a lot of comedy. This just would not work in an American twang.”

Driftwood The Musical Driftwood The Musical is an intensely personal project for singer Tania de Jong AM, inspired as it is by the remarkable history of her family’s escape from the Nazis during WWII. In addition to playing the role of her grandmother in the world premiere, Tania is the producer and has also written some of the lyrics.

The musical starts in Europe but moves to north Victoria and Melbourne.

“When they eventually arrived in Australia, they were interned as enemy aliens.”

How they went from enemies of the state to esteemed Melbourne artists forms part of the narrative of the musical.

Tania and composer Anthony Barnhill became excited about the potential of the story when they attended the launch of her mother’s memoirs in 2017.

Thirty years “Being a singer and musician, I But I never lost sight of you. All thought, we have got to turn it into a piece of music theatre,” she said. those tears The first part of the musical is set Keeping the memory alive.

Thirty years waiting in Austria, including references to a classic Viennese lullaby and a Thirty years wondering traditional Yiddish prayer song. Most Tell me, how did we survive? of the music is original compositions.

“I have my own sound, which has “My grandmother (Slawa Duldig) a Jewish quality, slightly influenced by invented the foldable (telescopic) Fiddler on the Roof. I have written for umbrella in Vienna in 1929.

Inspiration came on a rainy day when the voices we have in the cast, including some big soaring melodies,” she thought, why couldn’t someone Anthony said. invent an umbrella which fits into a The lyrics and music will be more bag. She worked on it for nine months to come up with the design,” international in flavour than local.

“I worked on Muriel’s Wedding, Tania told me.

“My grandfather (Karl Duldig) was where the Australian accent was a feature of the sound. Other pieces go a sculptor and professional tennis for much more neutral quality. That is player.” where we are going,” he said.

Their ideal life was turned on its head when Hitler integrated Austria Tania would like more stories of into Germany, and as Jews they could the migrant experience told on stage.

“Australians come from so many no longer work. At the time her grandfather was playing professional different places. There are not enough meaningful, true stories on the tennis in Switzerland.

“Their escape was miraculous; he musical theatre stage. We need to see had to bribe a Swiss border guard. He more deep stories of this nature that reflect the diversity of who we are and sculpted a bust for the border guard to get his wife and my mother in.” the people who have rebuilt their lives from incredible hardship,” she said.

Driftwood The Musical Based on the original memoir by Tania’s mother, Eva de Jong-Duldig, with book and lyrics by Jane Bodie and music by Anthony Barnhill. Its world premiere season plays at the Alexander Theatre, Monash University on May 13 and 14, then Chapel off Chapel from May 18 to 28. driftwoodthemusical.com.au stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 13

With the imminent inaugural tour of Penn and Teller, Coral Drouyn looks at the historic tradition of magic in Australia’s theatre world.

Cosentino.

14 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

You can’t truly love theatre and not believe in magic. It happens every time the lights go down, the curtain goes up and we are transported to another world. That’s magic! We believe the actors are other people, and that the story they are telling is the truth. We accept that bursting into song, or a dozen dancers suddenly appearing on the stage, is all perfectly normal and we are willing participants sitting in the stalls. The lights appear from nowhere, the chandelier almost falls on the audience, the pumpkin turns into a glass coach, thousands of animals stampede and lions can talk.

Add to that, gigantic cats that sing and dance at night in a huge city dump, and of course we can’t forget that Harry Potter is now a stage show, literally creating Hogwarts’ magic before our eyes.

All that is needed is for us to suspend disbelief - then we are kids again, wondering how Uncle Harry made a 20-cent piece disappear. You simply can’t have theatre if the audience isn’t prepared to make that leap. But what of those on the other side? Those who create the magic.

Penn and Teller will embark on their first tour of Australia in June and July, and only the worst kind of theatre snob would dare to ask “Penn and...who?” Renowned the world over, and perhaps the most successful magicians of all time, the two are masters of illusion, sleight of hand, and comedy.

Arguably the highest paid act of their kind in the

world, they have performed together for over 40 years, been resident in Las Vegas for 20 years, and have had three shows on Broadway. While Teller (Raymond - yes, he does have a first name) decided very early in their career not to speak on stage, to lessen the chances of being heckled, Penn Jillette can and will talk on just about any subject you can name.

Between them they have written more than a dozen books, appeared in over 50 different television shows, as well as their own current series Penn and Teller Fool Us, and more than 20 films. Teller has directed Shakespeare (including Macbeth and a magic-full version of The Tempest), and taught Greek and Latin, while Jillette has raised several million dollars for charity through Celebrity Apprentice and even Dancing with the Stars. On top of all that he is an avid upright bass player and even an inventor. If all of that doesn’t make them superstars, I don’t know what it would take. Yet, even with their credentials, they would be the first to tell you that what they do is not magic. They are not gods; they don’t have superpowers; they deal in illusion, sleight of hand, perception and misdirection (ever been distracted

by Penn’s red finger-nail?). They will explain that what they do is the result of technique and practise. It takes

endless hard work to make an audience feel a sense of wonder and awe. The secret is...they know how it’s done, and we don’t.

Of course, most of us have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that not so long ago - in the 20th century (50-100 years ago) magicians were revered, and the “greatest magician in the entire world” was an Australian.

Les Cole (1892-1978) was brought up in Wangaratta and his first job was driving a baker’s cart. He started, like most magicians do, as a child performing simple tricks with a plastic wand and a cup. But by the time he was fifteen he was already touring the country with a travelling show, and he had founded the Australian Society of Magicians Incorporated, the fourth oldest magic society in the world. And he became ‘The Great Levante’. If I had known, when my parents worked with him in the 1950s, that I had met the world’s greatest magician, I would have paid far more attention. And if you’ve ever seen a magic show where someone is suspended on a sword and then drops and is impaled, you have seen a trick created by Les Cole nearly 100 years ago.

Australia has a long history of producing world class magicians, especially grand illusionists. Maybe it’s to do with the convict mentality and

the need to escape that is at the core of our heritage. Or maybe it’s just that we are free thinkers in a world that has been governed by the restrictions of the word “can’t”. And it wasn’t restricted to men either. In an age when women were largely considered to be home-keepers or harlots, there were some who were trail blazers in the world of magic. For many this was restricted to being the magician’s assistant, even if they were an integral part of the act, like the very beautiful Geelong girl Loretta Millar, who became world famous American magician Dante’s assistant and was billed as Moi-Yo Millar. Others aspired to stardom in their own right.

Esme Levante - Les’ daughter started working on stage with her father when she was only 5 years old.

By the time she reached her teens, she was already performing major illusions both here and abroad and had been the “psychic” in a mind-reading act with her dad. But she needed to create her own legacy. She was only 16 years old when she performed the daring feat which saw her shackled and thrown into a freezing cold river, seemingly to drown, only to appear on the surface several minutes later, free and with shackles in hand. It caused a (Continued on page 16)

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 15

Jo Clyne.

(Continued from page 15)

sensation, even though Esme was still considered Levante’s assistant, despite her years as an integral part of the act.

It took years (and her father’s retirement) for Esme to become a headliner in her own right. Right into the 1950s and 60s she became a fashionable magic star in the finest clubs in Europe.

But it’s now a whole new world of entertainment, and what once seemed magical is now almost commonplace.

We have a whole generation of people who have grown up with the magic of Harry Potter and Marvel Comic heroes on film.

As Cosentino, one of our greatest showmen and perhaps our finest illusionist of all time, explained, “When the audience watches a film, let’s say a sci-fi blockbuster, the audience knows it’s being tricked into believing the fake worlds, characters and creatures they see on the screen. The sci-fi blockbuster is all fantasy, but the audience happily goes along for the ride. They know the special effects, or let’s call it ‘movie magic’, they see on the screen is not real. But the storytelling and the emotions have to hook us and have some base in reality.

When they do, then the audience can buy into the fantasy.”

So perhaps it isn’t the magic, but the storytelling and the characters that make shows like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child such a resounding success, as well as being the most awarded new play in history. It reopens at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne on May 4 for an indefinite run. The production has a permanent magician backstage to work on the illusions. Actors have to be taught the tricks, and props need checking and setting for every show.

We don’t think of special effects as magic, but it’s just another name for the same thing. Paul Cosentino agrees.

“Audiences have the answers to many secrets just at their fingertips, and very often an audience may think they know how something is done, but if the magician is still able to baffle them under those restrictions, then the magic becomes even more potent!

That’s when the audiences truly gasp.

16 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Cosentino Tour Dates May 6: Horsham - Town Hall Sunday May 8: Mildura - Performing Arts Centre Sunday May 15: Bathurst - Memorial Entertainment Centre May 17: Port Macquarie - Glasshouse theatre May 18: Taree - Manning Entertainment Centre May 21: Tamworth - TRECC It’s almost to the magician’s advantage at that point. Thus, as magicians we have to stay a step ahead of the audience with technology and understand that it’s not just about secrets. It’s about storytelling, maybe conveying a message and wrapping the illusion up in entertainment, music, dance, lighting etc. It’s a full experience.”

With ticket prices in theatres constantly rising, “the full experience” is what we are all looking for, but all too often we are let down.

Those who have seen Ghost - The Musical came away talking about the special effects, not the songs. Bad news for a musical. On the other hand, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz is clearly a lover of magic, having written The Magic Show, a charming musical about (and for) Magician Doug Henning, and the blockbuster Wicked, with witches and

spells and a perfect magic of its own.

Even the opening number of perhaps his finest show, Pippin, promises “Magic to Do”.

Dr Jo Clyne is a magician, but she can’t cure anything. She has a PhD in History and Theatre and became fascinated with magic while studying.

“Magic isn’t really magic, of course,” she tells me, much to my disappointment, “and the majority of magicians these days do close-up magic or strolling magic. It’s the easiest way to make a living. We look like everybody else - no long tailed evening dress and assistants in spangles. That tends to put a barrier between the magician and the audience. And no, I didn’t get given a magic kit when I was a kid (most magicians do). I started learning magic while doing my degree and became (Continued on page 18)

Penn & Teller.

Photo: Francis George.

Inset: First working together in 1975 .

Penn & Teller Australia 2022 June 1 - 11: Sydney Opera House June 14 - 18: Arts Centre Melbourne June 22 - July 3: QPAC

Moi-Yo Miller.

Esme Levante.

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 17

The Melbourne Magic Festival June 27 to July 9 melbournemagicfestival.com

Tim Ellis.

18 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

(Continued from page 16)

fascinated with the skill involved in close-up magic.”

Jo will bring her show to the Melbourne Magic Festival - yes there really is a Magic Festival with 130 performances by 30 different magicians, several of whom have actually fooled Penn and Teller.

Conceived by the Australian Institute of Magic, it’s now in its 15th year and is the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

Magician Tim Ellis is the frenetic entrepreneur and magician who runs the festival and is delighted to see so many new magicians making their way.

“Magic is thriving,” he tells me.

“We no longer have to pretend we have special powers, but it’s still about evoking a sense of awe and wonder.

There’s an unspoken agreement that we’re going to deceive you.”

Tim actually has his own magic theatre called The Laneway. The location is secret and you don’t get the address until you book your tickets.

Winner of multiple international awards, including one for the Guinness Book of Records, Tim kept magic alive during the lockdowns by encouraging other magicians, besides himself, to do shows by Zoom.

“It obviously helped a lot of people to have us come into their homes, even by Zoom, and make them smile, or gasp in surprise. But it’s such a buzz to be back performing live. That’s why the festival is so important. It’s about that connection between magician and audience.”

Tim believes that there are three kinds of audiences for magic.

1) Those who are happy to believe.

2) Those who have to know how it’s done.

3) Those who hate magic - and don’t we all know some cynics that fit that category?

Perhaps, like so many things in the world of theatre, it’s best not to put a label on magic. It’s just something we don’t have an explanation for. I’m a believer. I just don’t want to know how it’s done. That’s show business.

Tell Me Before The Sun Explodes Playwright Jacob Parker’s new work Tell Me Before the Sun Explodes poses the question: What you would do if the world was about to end? In this Q&A he interviews of one of his actors, Tim McGarry (also a playwright), who recently adapted Boy Swallows Universe for Queensland Theatre.

Jacob Parker: OK, you have eight minutes before the sun explodes Tim! How are you spending it?

Tim McGarry: Probably reading your script so I can get those lines down!

The show goes on even when the sun explodes, yes? But if I’m let off that hook, then it’s hard not to reflect on the past when there’s an end near.

JP: And what in your past comes to mind? I’d love to hear about your career highlights, whether that be as actor or writer?

TM: The first was working closely with Li Cunxin on his picture book The Peasant Prince, the True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer. Li is an extraordinary human being, and his life story is a truly remarkable tale, from growing up in Communist China, to defecting to the USA. The second was working on Susanne Gervay’s novel I Am Jack, based on Susanne’s son’s horrendous bullying at a Sydney school. It was heart wrenching and apart from cowriting and developing the play, I performed it 450 times throughout Australia and the USA as a one man show over four years. That was closely followed by Big River the Musical, at around 400 performances.

JP: I had no idea you did a musical!

Now I’m wondering whether we can get you to sing for our show...

TM: Don’t tempt me...

JP: What was the third highlight?

TM: The third was my recent commission with Queensland Theatre, adapting Boy Swallows Universe.

Working with Sam Strong, Queensland Theatre, and of course the incredible Trent Dalton, was sheer magic!

JP: I love that you described it as magic, because I think that’s sometimes the only way to describe the feeling.

TM: How about you?

JP: Probably taking This Genuine Moment to La Mama for Midsumma Festival last year. You know the fun of being a writer in the room where you’re sort of sitting there, not sure what to do, but just watching being like, oh this is cool - those are my words!

TM: There’s something special about seeing your writing come to life after so long being stuck in the words, isn’t there?

JP: Do you find it easy to flip between writer and actor?

TM: I kind of think it is easy. I think as actors we have naturally dramaturgical brains, particularly as we get to understand our own roles on a deeper level. I try and focus on what the writer is trying to convey in the character I’m playing, and you’ve provided so much to dive into!

JP: Is that what initially attracted you to Tell Me Before The Sun Explodes?

TM: Well, first up you know what I loved? The fact that I was going to be working with a whole new generation of theatre makers I had never worked with. Then I read your play and I just thought...wow! What an exciting piece.

Tell Me Before The Sun Explodes Playing at the Kings Cross Theatre from May 4 to 14. rockbottomproductions.com.au

So cleverly constructed, so rich thematically, great dialogue, great premise and of course the role of Andrew very much of my era and experience. I loved it. What made you write it?

JP: I think I knew I wanted to explore death and goodbyes and this idea of certainty from a queer perspective. Maybe it’s a bit selfish. I wanted to write it because it’s a story that I want to see. Because we see so much death in queer media, but it’s never really explored, it’s more just...there. It’s like, oh gays are dying, and they die a lot, that’s cool. What’s your take on the story?

TM: Everybody will come to terms with change and loss in their own way, in their own time. Time is the great healer. People change and grow at different times, and relationships are always for a season - we just never know how long that season is - that all sounds a bit heavy doesn’t it - I guess that’s why it’s important to enjoy the here and now! There is a wonderful fairy tale meme with a prince asking a princess, “What should one do before one dies?” and the princess answers “Live”.

Tim McGarry and Jacob Parker.

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 19

Following the biggest, wettest outdoor production ever staged on Sydney Harbour, Clif Bothwell, Technical Director of Opera Australia, explains to David Spicer the challenges of staging The Phantom of the Opera in drenching rain.

The Phantom Of The Opera Directed by Simon Phillips.

Set and Costumes by Gabriela Tylesova.

Lighting by Nick Schlieper.

150 builders and painters built the sweeping staircase in two days, then spent more than a week dressing it with the gold balustrade and other ornaments.

It was 2.5 metres larger than any indoor stage in Australia and connected to the towering pillar of the Paris Opera theatre and the Phantom’s special box. The legendary chandelier, that is a replica of the original at Paris’ Opéra Garnier, was strung with 80 light bulbs.

20 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

“We lost two full days of construction due to the rain, then we lost rehearsals because of a torrential downpour.

“COVID-19 also meant that the delivery of props and scenery was late, and things arrived out of order. The chandelier only came four days before opening night.

“We had to make sure the floor was anti-slip, and we changed the performers’ shoes to Volleys. The cast wore thermal underwear to keep them warm, while radio microphones were chosen for water resistance.

“If there was wind and rain, we had a matrix of safety.

With heavy rain, up to a level, we continue, and we also modify the show for wind. Something swinging in the breeze - such as the chandelier - might not be dangerous, but people think it is, so we bring it down. We had one cast member flying in a cage. This was also modified when it got too windy.

“We spring leaks every year, which drip onto the orchestra under the stage. Usually it is like a leaky tap, but due to the unprecedented downpour it was more like a heavy flow. We had to find unique ways to allow the orchestra to continue to play. We put them into gazebos so they were in a dry pod, but water always seemed to get in.

“All operas on the harbour are complicated, but this had the most elements. Phantom had two large items -

the staircase and a tower. There was automation comprising a revolve, an up-stage truck and smaller automation, being the gondola. We used two gondolas one was suspended above the water behind the stage, and another was on a track in front of the stage. A horizontal gas bar was built into the stage for the flames.

“I liked how the staircase linked into the tower.

Neither was overused but was a physical structure to start the story.

“The more intimate scenes were realised with creative lighting. The dark lair, dingy room or dressing room were set on the (stage) truck. To make it more intimate the mood lighting allowed some of the detail to disappear.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber came and saw it a couple of times during rehearsal and once we opened.

“He gave us some very constructive notes which were well warranted. He said the flame (in the gondola scene) was on for too long, so we modified that for him.

“Overall, I think he loved it.”

Photo: Brendan Tremb ath

Online extras!

Photo: Hamilton Lund.

Sydney’s torrential rain tested the cast, crew and audiences alike. bit.ly/3jPacKY stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 21

Queenland Theatre inundated by floodwaters.

Photo Daniel Sinclair.

First a plague and then floods - Beth Keehn reports on how staff and volunteers saved theatres battered by wild storms.

did not reach the level of our ground floor rehearsal room.”

When I saw the QSO’s Studio In late February, theatres in the river. All shows were cancelled, performance on 13 March, the Queensland and New South Wales and the Queensland Cultural Centre musicians were still performing with recovering from COVID-19 disruptions (QCC) site closed. The cast and crew borrowed instruments because they had to face the further challenge of of Frozen, who had only just opened, could not access QPAC’s rooms to dealing with the deluge of flood had to go on hold, and Cabaret De retrieve their own. Fortunately, they waters.

Paris was postponed. have all their instruments back now.

Whole communities were under Regional venues were also Julie Geiser, Communications water and, even when venue repairs Manager at Arts Queensland, told inundated. were possible, a shortage of building Stage Whispers “The recovery effort The Ipswich Civic Centre had to materials made speedy repairs close and postpone 10 upcoming has included the deployment of impossible. around 200 people to support 24/7 productions, including local choir In South Brisbane, Queensland recovery work, and the removal of 32 showcases and Priscilla Queen of the Theatre’s beloved Bille Brown Theatre million litres of water - almost 13 Desert, which shifted its sequins by a and Diane Cilento Studio - on low Olympic-sized swimming pools. This month to May. ground close to the Brisbane River water inundated lower levels of QPAC, As extreme weather moved south went under about 75cm of water, to northern New South Wales, the and other buildings and car parking covering the backstage area, stage, facilities across the QCC.” Wilson River’s rise caused the worst foyer, reception and car park.

In late April QPAC’s car parks and flooding in the region’s history, with Artistic Director Lee Lewis credited the Playhouse Theatre remained shut, many galleries, theatres and the company’s post-2011 flood plan but the Concert Hall’s schedule is community centres affected. for minimising the damage, and staff back on track, as is Frozen at the Lyric Lismore bore the brunt of a double who braved the weather to rescue Theatre. dose of floods. Theatre Theatre valuable equipment by moving it to QPAC’s rehearsal rooms and Productions, a youth theatre group, higher ground. lost everything in the flood. Their venues have hosted the Queensland It wasn’t until 10 days after the Symphony Orchestra (QSO) and Masonic Temple Theatre went under deluge that staff and volunteers were stored their precious instruments water and the troupe put out the call able to start the clean-up. On 20 since 2012. These had to be scooped for mops and buckets to their March, Lewis announced that the up by brave workers and taken to dedicated volunteers. theatre’s floors and walls had to be The Murwillumbah Theatre higher and drier ground. removed and joinery and wiring Matt Hodge, QSO’s Director of Company fared better than most. replaced. Shows, including the world Marketing, told us: “A couple of They graciously moved out to a new premiere of Don’t Ask What the Bird heroic members of the Performance temporary home at the Tweed Heads Look Like by Hannah Belanszky, were Services team braved the floodwaters Civic Centre to allow their usual postponed. production venue at the on Sunday evening (27 February) to Elsewhere in South Brisbane, Murwillumbah Auditorium, which make sure that all instruments were Queensland Performing Arts Centre placed high enough to avoid any was miraculously undamaged by the (QPAC) suffered from its proximity to flooding. Mercifully, the flood waters 22 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

The clean-up at QPAC.

Repairs underway at Queensland Theatre.

Photo: Cinnamon Smith.

Rallying The Troupes

Communities rallied, volunteers cleaned up, and many groups put the word out that they were ready to help. After having to postpone their production of Clue on Stage, due to cast and crew being affected by the floods, Ballina Players offered their theatre as a venue for free healthcare treatments to people in the local community.

Lismore Theatre Company made their Rochdale Theatre in Goonellabah available for other community groups to use for meetings and events after many members of their theatre community - cast, crew and members - lost everything. The theatre held a fundraiser performance of Running up a Dress

by Suzanne Spunner, which was so popular with local audiences they added extra shows.

Darling Opera - a new company founded by soprano Emma Nightingale held a benefit concert at Sandgate Town Hall on 30 April to support flood relief.

In Lismore, the Northern Rivers Conservatorium lost all its musical equipment and orchestral instruments, as well as its library of sheet music.

Partnering with Resound (The Music Trust), the Conservatorium will donate replacement instruments to the Lismore community.

Meanwhile, Resound have a place to donate musical instruments or funds on their website resound.org.au Of course the best way to support our theatres, large and small, to recover is to get back out to shows and events, buy a ticket - and take a friend or two! waters, to be used as the local Flood Recovery Centre.

The group’s 2022 season is back on track. The theatre’s President, Bryanne Jardine, told Stage Whispers: “We were lucky that our premises are new and survived in a flood-free zone.

However, we couldn’t actually get there to check because all the surrounding roads were flooded. Our actors were impacted because they couldn’t get to rehearsals.

“We’ve also found that our audiences have been impacted. They

Looming floodwaters at QPAC. Rochdale Theatre, Gonnellabah

Floodwaters in Lismore.

won’t travel because of the state of the roads.

“Our Youth Theatre programme has also been badly affected because it was based at the local community centre and it went under water. We were able to go ahead with senior classes, but junior classes just haven’t been possible due to the timing and parents travelling from schools to our industrial shed. People are so demoralised in town. We really want to be able to give them theatre!” stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 23

Australia In 50 Plays:

The Blind Giant Is Dancing vs Diving For Pearls Australia In 50 Plays is Julian Meyrick’s lively account of the relationship between our national drama and our national life. His new book explores fifty notable Australian plays of diverse content and style that have appeared since Federation in 1901.

In this edited extract from the chapter The Death of the Lucky Country, he discusses Australian drama from 1976 to 1990, a fifteen year stretch that saw tumultuous changes in the country economically and politically, as well as the way it imagined itself on stage.

The Whitlam years from 1972 to 1975 are supposedly ones of major transformation. They were. But as the 1980s wore on, the deindustrialisation sweeping the Australian workforce, and the accompanying social dislocation, became more pronounced. Overseas, Eastern European countries were dumping their Communist regimes and embracing a capitalist, if not always a democratic, future.

In 1975, in response to the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, Donald Horne wrote a sequel to his famous 1964 book, calling it The Death of the Lucky Country. It is a title with deeper resonance, suggesting an end to the confident assumption that the ‘new nationalism’ of the 1970s would progress into the future without challenge or check. This chapter discusses how two Australian plays captured the darkening mood of the country in human terms. *

*

*

Stephen Sewell’s The Blind Giant is Dancing premiered in 1983, Katherine Thomson’s Diving for Pearls in 1990.

They portray two radically different Australias. Reading Diving for Pearls now it is easy to relate to its action and tone. Thirty years later, we are still living in the world of Thomson’s play. By contrast, the world of Blind Giant has disappeared into oblivion. Not only does its story feel distant, so do the values that gave rise to it. This is a clue to the scale of the changes that 24 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

happened in these seven years. By 1990, not only was another kind of Australian play being written, another kind of Australian had appeared to watch it.

Blind Giant starts with an assassination and ends with a suicide.

Allen Fitzgerald, the lead character, is a 1980s version of an 1870s bushranger: a socialist economist. He is involved in a no-holds-barred power struggle with Michael Wells, a kingmaker in the Labor Party. Allen is leader of the left faction of the party, Wells of the right. As their manoeuvring plays out like a deadly game of chess, there is a chance for the left to ‘get the numbers’ and take control of the party executive.

At the core of Blind Giant’s narrative is Austeel, a steel smelting factory.

Allen’s family is working class, and his father, Doug, and brother, Bruce, are employed there. There is a third older brother, killed in the Vietnam War. Doug is a blue-collar patriarch, all male pride and bragging self-reliance. He is also a bully, who forced his eldest son into the army, and now blames Allen for his death.

Other characters have a similar representative function: Bob Lang, a ‘bourgeois economist’ (it says a lot about the changes in Australia that this phrase is meaningless now); Sir Leslie Harris, who owns Austeel, and is described simply as ‘a capitalist’; Ramon, an exiled Chilean socialist, abandoned by Allen; and Rose Draper, a financial journalist whose nihilism symbolises the despair of Australia’s intellectual elite in the same way that Doug symbolises the cupidity of its manual workers.

Reading Blind Giant is like stepping into a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The luciferous nature of the action - many of the scenes are at night - magnifies its

dysphoric feel, supercharging the message that capitalism is in its death throes. The description of the steel mill is hellish: ‘It is spectacular and terrifying...there are flames, torches, unbelievable noise. Men are directing a river of molten steel across the floor’.

Austeel is an Australian company protected by government tariffs.

Although a Labor Party bureaucrat, Wells wants to privatise the factory as a way of winding back subsidies that are ‘only an excuse for lining the pockets of titled bludgers’.

Over the course of two long acts, everyone betrays everyone else. Wells is set up by a US intelligence agent and Allen takes the bait, manipulated by Rose. After Wells is thrown out of office because of a (faked) corruption scandal, Allen takes his place. His first action is to pave the way for the privatisation of Austeel. When Lang visits Allen to tell him that Labor plans to ‘import everything. We won’t have a manufacturing sector left’, Allen only replies, ‘That’s capitalism’.

Diving for Pearls is also set in a steel mill, in Wollongong. Compared with Blind Giant, it seems more straightforward. Its leading male character, Den, has been employed as a ‘shovel donkey’ in the mill for 25 years.

At the start of the play, he tries to hook up with an ex-lover, Barbara. The conversation borders on light banter.

Gone is Blind Giant’s umbrous sense of impending catastrophe. The dialogue is bright and cheery, with a vein of tongue-in-cheek humour. After the nightmare world of Hieronymus Bosch, Diving for Pearls feels as playful and shadow-free as a Howard Arkley painting.

Yet dramatic styles, like appearances, can be deceptive. Diving for Pearls is as full of betrayal and

Published by Currency Press. Purchase your copy for $39.99 from booknook.com.au/product/australia-in-50-plays

distrust as Blind Giant. Its outcomes are as nugatory and its politics just as rank.

If anything, the underlying message is worse, in that at least Sewell’s characters know Australia is in trouble and they are letting themselves down.

Diving for Pearls finishes in a more disturbing way, as if its action were inherently irresolvable.

Like Austeel, the State Engineering Works is sold off to a private company.

But in the years from 1983 to 1990 Australia has gone from downsizing to asset-stripping. The factory will be demolished for a housing development.

As the management consultant brought in to reorganise the steel mill tells Den later, ‘The bottom line is you were unlucky enough to work on a site that’s got spectacular views’.

Thomson describes Barbara as ‘close to 40...she has worked in a clothing factory since the age of 14 and is accomplished at standing up for herself. While she eschews self-pity, there is a vulnerability to her, despite her brittleness’.

Barbara is not an unattractive personality. She’s funny and selfdeprecating, and has what would now be called ‘resilience’. But the values underneath the bubbly surface are less appealing. As she lurches from disaster to disaster her selfishness goes from being one aspect of her character to being its central trait. The cause is the same as in Blind Giant: the corrupting power of capitalism. Not only is Barbara oblivious to the changes happening around her, she believes the hype. ‘It’s all a race’, she tells Den early on. Then,

Belvoir’s The Blind Giant Is Dancing (2016).

Photo: Brett Boardman.

when he is thinking about refusing his redundancy package, ‘Money’s not to live on. It’s just to use so you can get more. I do know. I have been thinking about money pretty solidly for most of my waking life’.

Barbara treats Den with a corrosive disrespect that never quite topples into open disdain. This is not true of her behaviour towards Verge, her disabled daughter, however, or Marj, her prim but not uncaring sister. In Act 2, she binds Verge and locks her in a cupboard to stop her following her to a job interview. Verge escapes just as Den is telling Barbara he will refuse a payout. The argument that follows is ugly beyond anything in Blind Giant in part because it runs counter to the comic tone that dominates the rest of the play. The last scene takes place on the same hill where they met in the first. ‘You take back all those things you said about me’, Barbara demands, forgetting the many things she said about him. ‘I can’t’, Den replies.

Blind Giant and Diving for Pearls, so close in time, highlight the changes in Australia in the late 1970s and 1980s.

During this period, domestic manufacturing fell from 20 per cent of GDP to less than 13 per cent and government grants to industry dropped from over 25 per cent of revenue to less than 10 per cent. A 1999 federal Treasury report blandly notes, ‘Many Australian manufacturers have moved their production offshore, to remain competitive in international markets...however they still contribute

Book Extract

to the well-being of Australians as the profits from the manufactures accrue to Australian shareholders’ (12).

Not for those like Den and Jacko, who lost their jobs in the process. In the 1980s, Australia’s ruling elite abandoned the Keynesian trifecta of government intervention, progressive taxation and full employment, and moved to the neoliberal one of small government, flat taxation and a ‘natural rate of unemployment’. Blind Giant and Diving for Pearls capture this shift in experiential terms, showing the human cost involved.

A change in the nation’s narrative presages a change in the characters in its drama. In going from the corruption of Allen to the disintegration of Barbara, a different conception of ‘an Australian’ appears on stage. Shorn of her class affiliations and connections to community, the representative side of Barbara’s character collapses. By the end of Diving for Pearls, she ‘represents’ nothing but herself. The question of what Barbara stands for looms like the edge of a cliff at the end of Thomson’s play, the bonds of collective belonging having dissolved along with the way of life that produced them. No wonder problems of identity preoccupy Australian playwrights after 1990!

Haunting both plays therefore is a question: ‘What comes next for the lucky country?’ If one kind of Australia was passing away, what kind of Australia was emerging to replace it?

It is a question that shapes the nation’s drama for the next 30 years. stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 25

Broadway Buzz

Online extras!

Pamela Anderson reveals what taking on the role of Roxie Hart means to her. youtu.be/A0HWZ4Uf90Y Through the years Goodspeed have premiered a host of musicals which have gone on to great Broadway success, among them Man of La Mancha (1965) and Annie (1976).

Jason Howland is also responsible for some of the music in Paradise Square, a new musical playing at the Barrymore Theatre, about the Five Points slum area of New York City, when Irish immigrants and blacks Pamela Anderson and Lana Gordon in Chicago. rubbed shoulders as the Civil War Photo: Evan Agostini / AP. raged on in the South. Actually, it’s not a new musical but an old one Belasco seats about 1,000. It replaces heated up. Its origins can be traced

By Peter Pinne back to off-off-Broadway in 2012 Girl From the North Country which when it was called Hard Times. Larry Baywatch icon and Playboy also closed, a casualty of COVID-19.

Kirwin was the only writer back then, magazine cover model for a record 14 Girl hopes to reopen in the spring. times, Pamela Anderson is the latest Mockingbird has long since recouped in what was mostly a bio-musical in a long list of high-profile guest its $7.5 million capitalisation costs but about songwriter Stephen Foster. performers to join the cast of Girl is still in the red, with none of its “Camptown Races”, “Old Folks At Home” and “Oh! Susanna” all make Broadway’s longest-running American $9 million capitalisation returned. appearances in a show one critic musical Chicago. She plays Roxie Hart Meanwhile, across the pond, called Gangs of New York meets Step for a limited season that began in Mockingbird looks like repeating its April and concludes 5 June 2022. The Broadway success in London, where it Up. Producer Garth Drabinsky was obviously hoping for another Ragtime, production originated as an Encores! opened at the Gielgud Theatre 10 and whilst the performers were wildly concert in 1995, leading to the 1996 March. ‘Rafe Spall shines in Aaron applauded, the show was not, with Broadway revival which starred Anne Sorkin’s stage adaptation’ ran a Variety saying it, ‘puts a host of stock Reinking as Roxie. Anderson plays headline on londontheater.co.uk, characters in a broadly sketched alongside a trio of new performers about Spall’s ‘great achievement’ as historical setting, piles on the plot, including Lana Gordon (Velma Kelly), Atticus Finch. It plays (COVID-19 and hopes for contemporary Ryan Silverman (Billy Flynn) and allowing) until 19 November. resonance. The result is a tiresome Brenda Braxton (Matron “Mama” Goodspeed Musicals will present mess.’

Morton). the World Premiere of Christmas in Cyndi Lauper’s Tony winning To Kill a Mockingbird, the most Connecticut, a new musical set to play successful play in Broadway history, from 18 November to 30 December. musical Kinky Boots will return this summer for an off-Broadway run at has closed and laid-off the cast and Based on the 1945 Warner Brothers Stage 42, 26 July for a 25 August crew while the production downsizes film starring Barbara Stanwyck, the opening. Jerry Mitchell, as he did with to reopen in a smaller venue, the plot follows a chic Smart the original, will return to direct and Belasco Theater, on 1 June 2022. The Housekeeping columnist, Liz Lane, choreograph the production. The show closed when the pandemic hit who’s supposed to be an expert musical, which is based on the 2005 and reopened late last year with Jeff homemaker living in Connecticut, film scripted by Geoff Deane and Tim Daniels returning to his original role forced to entertain a war hero and Firth, has a book by Harvey Feirstein of Atticus Finch, with Tony winner her publisher for the holidays, when Celia Keenan-Bolger also returning as in actual fact she can’t cook, she isn’t and played Broadway in 2013, winning 6 Tony Awards including Best Scout. Greg Kinnear, who had been married, and she lives in a tiny New Score for Lauper, the first woman to playing the role of Finch when the York apartment. Directed by Amy win for Best Score outright. It later production closed, will remain with Corcoran, the musical has a book by played London in 2015, where it won the show when the production Patrick Pacheco and Erik Forrest 3 Olivier Awards. It also did a U.S. reopens in June. The Shubert Theater, Jackson, music by Jason Howland, and UK tour, and subsequently played where it has been playing since late lyrics by Amanda Yesnowitz, and hit engagements in Australia.

2018, has 1,435 seats, whereas the music direction by Adam Sousa.

26 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

London Calling

By Peter Pinne The highly anticipated revival of Alan Menken’s Sister Act is now due to open 19 July at the Eventim Apollo.

Leading the cast will be Beverley Knight (The Drifters Girl) as Deloris Van Cartier. Cheri and Bill Steinkellner’s script has been reworked and updated, with the role of Deloris now written for an older actress. The story, however, hasn’t changed - Deloris Van Cartier, a lounge singer, is placed in a witness protection programme and joins a convent. The cast also includes Keala Settle, currently making her West End debut as the Nurse in & Juliet, as Sister Mary Patrick. Settle is best known for playing Lettie Lutz in The Greatest Showman. Jennifer Saunders will play Mother Superior, with Lesley Joseph as Sister Mary Lazarus, Clive Rowe as Eddie Souther and Lizzie Bea as Sister Mary Robert. Sister Act originally opened at the London Palladium in 2009 with Patina Miller as Deloris and Sheila Hancock as Mother Superior. Miller won an Olivier Award, while the Evening Standard gave it four out of five stars, and wittily called it a ‘wimple-wibbling, habit-forming triumph’. It plays until 28 August. The third UK tour will open two weeks prior to the Eventim Apollo production, on 27 June at the Manchester Palace Theatre.

It’ll be a big year for composer Alan Menken, who will see three of his musicals staged in the West End Sister Act is followed by a return of Beauty and the Beast, then in November, the first London production of Newsies. Back in 2012 when Newsies opened on Broadway and won Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Choreography, Disney planned to mount a London production immediately. In fact they auditioned young actors for the boys, but when Aladdin opened on Broadway to a slew of rave reviews, the ‘mouse house’ opted instead to put Newsies on the back burner and bring Aladdin to London as soon as possible.

Newsies has a book by Harvey Fierstein, music by Menken, and lyrics

Sister Act The Musical.

by Jack Feldman. It’s based on the 1992 Disney ‘live’ action movie starring Christian Bale as Jack Kelly and Robert Duvall as publisher Joseph Pulitzer. The story follows the Newsboy Strike of 1899, where Jack Kelly, a newspaper boy in late 19th century New York, protests change and unites his fellow newsboys to fight for justice. Matt Cole will direct and choreograph the immersive production, which will be staged inthe-round. According to Cole, ‘the audience will be thrust into turn-ofthe-century New York, where the action and choreography will weave its way in and out of the audience.

Scenic design is by Morgan Large, costumes by Natalie Pryce, lighting by Mark Henderson, and sound by Tony Gayle.

Marianne Elliott’s revival production of Mike Bartlett’s Cock has been a casualty of COVID-19, with star Taron Egerton having to pull out due to testing positive. He has been replaced in the role of M by Joel Harper-Jackson, whose West End credits include Jesus Christ Superstar, Beautiful - The Carole King Musical, Evita, Pacific Overtures, and playing Charley Price on the UK tour of Kinky Boots. The cast also includes Jonathan Bailey (Jamie in the gender switched Company/Viscount Anthony Bridgerton in the Netflix hit Bridgerton) as John, Jade Anouka (His Dark Materials) as W, and Phil Daniels

(Eastenders) as F. It’s a challenging play in which a gay man in a longterm relationship becomes attracted to a woman. Lighting and sound are

by Paule Constable and Ian Dickinson respectively, who both did the same chore on Elliot’s groundbreaking The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

But Alan Menken doesn’t have multiple West End productions all to himself. Step up to the spotlight Mike Bartlett, with a trio of plays under his penmanship; Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre, will be followed by The 47th at the Old Vic, then Scandaltown at the Lyric Hammersmith. The 24th, directed by Rupert Goold, is set in 2024 amidst a polarising American Presidential Race, and stars Bertie Carvel as Donald Trump, Lydia Wilson as Ivanka Trump, Tamara Tunie as Kamala Harris, Ben Onwukwe as Barack Obama and Simon Williams as Joe Biden.

Scandaltown is a modern restoration comedy which sees a virtuous heroine heading to post-pandemic London in order to stop her twin brother from endangering his reputation. Political hypocrisy and a fame-obsessed elite feature in Bartlett’s stinging satire.

And if that’s not enough Bartlett, there’s also his TV drama about the newspaper industry, Press, and a toxic workplace television series, Sticks and Stones, based on his play Bull. stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 27

Stage On Page

By Peter Pinne This Much Is True - Miriam Margolyes (John Murray) In 2020 Miriam Margolyes was trapped in Tuscany, Italy, for eight months and during that time wrote her memoires - a deliciously vulgar, massively funny account of her life.

It’s one of the good things to come out of the COVID-19 lockdown.

A short, opinionated Jewish lesbian, she doesn’t spare us the ‘niceties’ in this 400-page tome that tells us about her school-life, her time in radio, film and theatre, and lavishly uses the ‘F’ and ‘C’ words to illustrate her thoughts throughout.

Margolyes received a BAFTA for her performance as Mrs Manson Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s movie of Enid Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1993), appeared as the lascivious Spanish Infanta working alongside Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder (1983), but is probably best-known for Pomona Spout, Professor of Herbology and Head of Hufflepuff House in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - having never read the books or seen the movies and disliking children. She’s also infamously known as the guest on The Graham Norton Show (2012) who tells dirty stories. Her partner of

28 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

fifty-three years, Heather, told her, ‘Now, don’t let this book be like one of your Graham Norton interviews where all you talk is smut - it’s got to be about things that matter, Miriam.’

So everything from politics, to the holocaust, and Jewishness comes up for discussion.

Margolyes’ father was a Scottish Jew, born in Glasgow to a jeweller father. In 1917 Daddy (as she always referred to him) was 18 and received his call-up papers to enlist and go to the First World War. His father, dressed in his best suit, went to see the commander in charge of the 4th Glasgow Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry and asked in broken English, would he take his son’s name off the draft. ‘He is the first member of our family to go to University,’ and ‘if he goes to France we both know he will never come back.’ He then put his hand in his pocket and took out a glistening diamond and begged the commander to take it. He did, and Daddy’s name was taken off the list.

He went on to study at Glasgow University and became a doctor.

Margolyes’ mother (always called Mummy) was lower-middle class, born in Liverpool. Whereas her father was quiet and unassuming, her mother was gregarious and did her housework in the nude. Margolyes was born in 1941, in the middle of the Blitz, and when a bomb nearly

took the family’s house out, they fled to the safer confines of Oxford.

From the beginning, Margolyes ‘wanted to stand-out, to be odd and talked about.’ She attended Oxford High School and even today can remember the names of every one of her school associates in a form photo of the Upper Fifth 1958. She got into Cambridge and ‘excelled at fellacio’.

As she said, ‘it was something I could do well and something I liked’. She also performed in the 1962 Footlights revue Double Take, directed by Trevor Nunn, and featuring John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Bill Oddie.

It was a miserable experience. At the time, The Footlights Club was male only and a woman had to be invited into it. Margolyes knew only one thing - how to be funny. The trouble is the ‘boys’ did not want the girl to be funny. They thought she was ‘a jumped up, pushy, overconfident, fat little Jew.’ ‘They weren’t used to dealing with strong opinionated women.’ Women were meant to be decorative. They wanted to sleep with women, not compete with them. And the problem was made even worse when she got excellent notices. So they never talked to her off-stage. Standing in the wings, no one said a word to her and it hurt a lot. She used to go home and weep. ‘Cleese, Chapman and Oddie were total shits - and they have

Get your copy of This Much Is True for $49.99 from Book Nook. bit.ly/3uOoNwx

Margolyes’ face when she was pinned to the floor (a tit for tat fart because she had farted on set), and playing the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (1996) with a Cuban accent! She palled up with Leonardo never apologised!’

DiCaprio on location in Mexico, and Following Cambridge, Margolyes together they went on shopping spent a good deal of the sixties sprees in flea-markets for tat. He working in BBC radio drama, where sometimes wore a dress. Margolyes she learnt accents and characters. accused him of being gay, but he Despite being tone deaf, Margolyes insisted he wasn’t. Everyone on the has appeared in three major musicals set was in love with him but - she did a UK tour of Fiddler on the Margolyes had no interest in his loin Roof playing the Matchmaker Yenta, department and that’s why they got understudied Barbara Windsor as on famously. The dress was only Lucy Brown in Kurt Weill’s The something he wore to get talked Threepenny Opera (1972), and played about.

Margolyes is a dichotomy - on one Madame Morrible in Wicked for six hand a staunch unionist and rabid months on Broadway, reciting the lyrics to her song in a ‘Sprechgesang’ left-winger, and on the other a Royalist. Even her background delivery.

Her one-woman shows include though working middle-class, Dickens’ Women, which she has growing up they always had a maid in the 40s and 50s, and an au-pair toured all over the world including Australia, a country that she loves. girl in the 60s who her father (worshipped by Margolyes) finally With partner Heather being screwed. It only endorsed Margolyes’ Australian, it’s not surprising she ended up buying a house here and attitude to men - they are all selfish, unfaithful sods. becoming naturalised in 2013. She She visited a kibbutz in Israel in has appeared in many high-profile movies including playing the the 60s. They wanted her to wash and dry dishes for five hundred housekeeper to Maggie Smith and people but she rebelled and instead Judi Dench in Ladies in Lavender (2006), a village woman in Barbra picked oranges. Margolyes’ was never one for housework.

Streisand’s Yentl (1983), Mabel, Her first brush with Hollywood Satan’s sister, with Arnold came in 1980 when she was called to Schwarzenegger in End of Days audition for well-known womaniser (1999), where he farted on

Warren Beatty for a small part as the secretary of the Communist Party in Reds. No lines but a good part. Beatty insisted he could only meet her in his trailer at lunchtime. She knocked on the door, he called ‘come in,’ and then proceeded to slowly look her up and down and finally said ‘Do you f**k?’ She said ‘yes, but not you.’

‘Why is that’ he asked, ‘because I’m a lesbian.’ He grinned and she got the part.

The book is not short of pathos, like when Kenneth Williams died.

Margolyes did a tribute to him on TV which resulted in a phone call from Maggie Smith, who told her ‘You were the only one who saw the sadness.’ The last words written in his diary were the giveaway, ‘Oh, what’s the bloody point?’ ‘An open verdict was recorded by the coroner, but we all knew it was suicide,’ says Margolyes. Margolyes was also in therapy for a while and her therapist told her that she had assisted in helping cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, stricken with Multiple Sclerosis, take her own life.

There’s one glaring mistake that I thought would have been corrected before now - Harold Robbins did not direct and choreograph the original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof, it was Jerome Robbins.

It’s a wild ride, and a wonderful read. It comes with a generous selection of colour and B&W photos and an index. Recommended! stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 29

Stage Sounds

By Peter Pinne 42nd Street (Harry Warren/Al Dubin) (Jay Records CDJAY2 1465) Jay’s first complete recording of 42nd Street is a thrilling, effervescent ride down traditional Broadway with a stellar cast. Cathy Wydner, who took over the role of Peggy Sawyer on Broadway, stars alongside Marti Stevens (Dorothy Brock), Jamie Ross (Julian Marsh), Michael Gruber (Billy Lawlor), Kim Criswell (Maggie) and Caroline O’Connor (Anytime Annie).

This 2CD set of the quintessential backstage musical comes with all the dance routines without any cuts (orchestrated by the wondrous Philip J. Lang), play-offs, entr’acte and exit music, plus number after number which include clear and precise taps by a group of 37 dancers who have all appeared in the show in the U.S., recorded in New York. The result is the most uplifting version of this tap-dancing extravaganza, with a ‘live’ feel.

Gruber is a terrific Billy, with his tenor coming to the fore in ‘Dames’, Criswell plays it broadly and belts hard on ‘Getting Out of Town’, whilst O’Connor eats up ‘Go Into Your Dance’. West End favorite Marti Stevens (Company/ High Spirits/No Strings) charms with ‘You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me’, which is repeated as a bonus track, while ‘I Know Now’ has been restored to its rightful place in the show and is recorded for the first time as part of the score. Originally from a Dick Powell movie, The Singing Marine (1937), the song was not recorded on the Original Broadway Cast

Online extras!

Grab your copy of 42nd Street from Jay Records. Scan the QR code or visit bit.ly/3OlsK3Q 30 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Mary Martin with the cast of The Sound Of Music (1959).

Photo: Friedman-Abeles / The New York Public Library.

Rating  Only for the enthusiast  Borderline  Worth buying  Must have  Kill for it album, and was replaced in the Australian production by ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, which is included here as a bonus track, sung by Stevens Accompaniment is by the National Symphony Orchestra under Craig Barna, who brings a fresh, crisp and emotional range to the familiar material.  Rainbows - Lorna Dallas (Stage Door STAGE 9092) American performer Lorna Dallas made a name for herself appearing alongside Cleo Laine in the West End revival of Show Boat (1971), later starring in Side By Side By Sondheim. This album, Rainbows, was originally released in 1986, but the reissue includes four bonus tracks that were recorded at the original sessions. It’s a marvelous selection of tunes from the period, with superb arrangements and orchestrations. Michel Legrand’s ‘Summer Me, Winter Me’ from the movie Picasso Summer is gorgeous, Alan Jay Lerner’s title song from Dance a Little Closer is a gem, and ‘I Loves You Porgy’ from Porgy and Bess is a searing vocal of an exquisitely dramatic Gershwin ballad. The accompanying 47-piece orchestra, under the baton of Harry Rabinowitz, sounds incredibly lush and romantic, and whilst Cy Coleman’s ‘Something Wonderful I Missed’ is a very ordinary country ode, Sondheim and Mary Rodgers’ ‘The Boy From...’, from The Mad Show (1966), still earns its laughs! 

Online extras!

Rainbows - The Lorna Dallas Album is available now from Stage Door Records. bit.ly/3rwLgwa

Another Time, Another Place - Sally Ann Howes (Stage Door STAGE 9091) Sally Ann Howes’ lilting, youthful soprano graced many a West End musical during the 1950s and this tribute celebrates the early career of the star who is forever associated with Truly Scrumptious in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). Songs from Bet Your Life (1952), Paint Your Wagon (1953), Romance in Candlelight (1958) and Summer Song (1958) feature, along with tracks from the TV musical Gift of the Magi (1958) and Broadway’s Kwamina (1961). From the latter, written for her by her then husband Richard Adler, comes the title track of the collection, a soaring ballad which she handles effortlessly.

She also effortlessly handles the top notes in Brigadoon’s ‘Almost Like Being in Love’, taken from a transcription recording from Stars for Defense. It’s a loving tribute to an incandescent star of the musical theatre. 

Online extras!

Get your hands on the limited edition Another Time, Another Place. bit.ly/3Ojc24Q Man Of La Mancha (Mitch Leigh/Joe Darion) (Jay Records CDJAY2 1304) This double CD set springs from a London production of the musical at the Peacock Theatre in 2000. It’s the first complete recording of the show, including all the songs plus most of the dialogue, with accompaniment by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abell. Ron Raines sings Don Quixote/Cervantes, Avery Saltzman is Sancho, and Kim Criswell is Aldonza/Dulcinea. I couldn’t think of finer performers to essay these roles. Despite a vibrato on his top notes, Raines gives a stirring and moving portrayal of the errant knight. Saltzman is excellent and good fun in the lighter moments, whilst Criswell’s Aldonza/ Dulcinea has a ton of fire and a stunning soprano.

Mitch Leigh’s score is full of Latin rhythms, personified by the constant use of Spanish acoustic guitar. There are no stringed instruments in the orchestration, only bass, with brass, woodwinds and percussion. The hit song, of course, is ‘The Impossible Dream’, a song with a time-signature of 9/8, which Raines sings to perfection.

Based on Dale Wasserman’s teleplay, I Don Quixote, it’s a superb adaptation and tremendously effective. The

Online extras!

Stream the 2000 London cast recording of Man Of La Mancha on Apple Music. apple.co/3vpNeiV

harrowing finale is not only regal and profound, but also very moving.  Dubbo Championship Wrestling (Daniel Cullen/James Cullen) (Studio Concept Album/All streaming platforms) Dubbo Championship Wrestling is a new musical that’s been developed by the Hayes Theatre Company, where it will premiere 12 May 2022. With a dream cast of star local performers - iOTA, Lara Mulcahy, Genevieve Lemon, Loren Hunter, Lucy Durack, Ryan Gonzalez, Amber Lawrence, Vidya Makan, David Campbell and Eddie Perfect, this concept album is Daniel and James Cullen’s first foray into musical theatre and is a resounding success. It skewers Australiana kitsch with knowing wit and irony, and comes with a warning that it ‘proudly makes FULL use of our filthy national lingo’. Mulcahy and Lemon have fun with the ‘Dubbomania Medley’, iOTA’s ‘It’s Still Real to Me’ has the pleasant feel of country, whilst Durack and Campbell lend their pipes to ‘The Dubbo National Anthem’. Best tracks are Hunter’s ballad ‘Make Believe’ and Ryan Gonzalez’ great 60s-sounding blues ‘I Won’t Let You.’ 

Online extras!

The Dubbo Championship Wrestling concept album is available on Spotify spoti.fi/3M50FLS Mary Martin on Air 1939-1950 (Stage Door STAGE 9089) Stage Door’s salute to Broadway diva Mary Martin is comprehensive, taking in a good swathe of her early career in radio. Taken from a host of transcription discs, the tracks provide good examples of her sweet, clear soprano, singing a host of movie songs and show tunes. Martin, best known for her stints on Broadway in Leave it to Me, South Pacific, Peter Pan and The Sound of Music, was one of the first vocalists to ‘swing’ the classics, with her repertoire including ‘Tit Willow’ from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado and ‘Caro Nome’ from Verdi’s Rigoletto. Called the ‘first feminine Bing Crosby’, she replaced Crosby on the Kraft Music Hall when he was on vacation. There are lots of Latin tracks, an interesting arrangement of Judy Garland’s signature, ‘The Trolley Song’, and two songs from South Pacific, ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’ and ‘A Wonderful Guy’, which she delivers with cheeky fun and humor. 

Online extras!

The 2-disc deluxe set of Mary Martin On Air is available at Stage Door Records. bit.ly/3rxgqmZ stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 31

Counting Pennies On Stages Past Archivist Susan Mills provides an insight into the way Australia’s grandest theatre organisation paid its actors and their fight for better conditions during a golden era for the performing arts.

The past is a vast tangled web of connections and context. Indeed, every type of record and ephemera gives us the whole picture of performing arts history.

The Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation Archives preserves photographs, programmes, scripts, and designs, but just as important are theatre administration records.

A fascinating glimpse into the business is provided by The Sydney Irving Collection, donated in 1999 by Emily Irving, Mr Irving’s widow, which relates mostly to his years of diligent management work at Australia’s largest theatre empire - J.C. Williamson Ltd. Sydney George Matthew Irving was born in Sydney in 1918. His father, head electrician for the Theatre Royal, died unexpectedly in 1929 on the train home from a show, compelling the 11-year-old Sydney to find evening and matinee work as a call boy at Her Majesty’s Theatre, under the employment of J.C. Williamson Ltd. At the age of 15 he left school to work full time for the company, eagerly learning the business at both front of house and backstage.

After serving in the Second World War, Sydney Irving returned in 1946 to J.C. Williamson, working for ‘The Firm’ as a senior manager there for more than 40 years.

Among the eight archive boxes in The Sydney Irving Collection is one impressively large book of salary sheets. The typewritten pages are carefully pasted into this large accounting book, meticulously detailing every penny and (later) cent owed to the J.C. Williamson theatre folk from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Wages paid can be an overlooked part of theatre history. However, just like now, as much as theatre is an art form, it certainly matters that 32 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

performers can make a living!

Historical newspaper articles tell of many court cases and activism around theatre wages. In 1912, a meeting of the Actors’ Union endorsed a £5 minimum weekly salary for actors, with the argument that ”no actor had any right to appear on the stage if he [or she] were not worth that sum weekly”.

In 1919, the newspapers reported on a court case that echoes our own times. Actor and dancer Clyde Cook sued J.C. Williamson Ltd for £266/13/4 after his weekly earnings of

£40 had been suspended due to a State Government order closing all theatres in response to the global influenza pandemic. J.C. Williamson ultimately won the court case, as their contracts specified that pay could be suspended due to ‘fire, tempest, earthquake, strike, or epidemic’.

The wage book provides detailed evidence of the salaries. One page from 1956 shows that for performances in Simon and Laura and The Deep Blue Sea at Adelaide’s Theatre Royal, ‘principal lady’ Googie Withers earned £200 a week, plus

To find out more about this collection and others visit sbwfoundation.com

Stage Heritage

10% of the box office receipts if total takings were between £2000 and £2600, and 10% throughout the season if the box office was over £2600.

Interestingly, also on this wage sheet is listed a child actor, John Cadwallader, being paid £15 weekly, plus £15/15/0 for his guardian (Mrs Cadwallader, presumably his mother) and “we pay her fares”. The ‘stage staff’ for Ladies’ and Gents’ wardrobes earned just over £16 each, plus £7 travel allowance. Truly a fascinating look at theatre operations.

Photographs are also to be found among The Sydney Irving Collection.

There is a wonderful set of six photos of the Criterion Theatre in Sydney, circa 1922. Built on the corner of Pitt and Park Streets in 1886, the ‘Cri’, as it was known, was originally designed for theatre entrepreneur John Solomon by the architect George Johnson. It was leased by the J.C. Williamson company in 1915, who used it for their imported West End shows, mostly comedies.

The photo set contains an exterior view and five splendid interior shots.

The exterior photo gives us the clue for a date, as signage for The Bat is visible - a show that opened at the Criterion Theatre on 5 August, 1922.

The photo captures the imposing Victorian baroque style exterior. With a colour scheme of blues and gold, and plush ruby upholstery and stage curtain with a JCW logo, the interior was also certainly grand. Although the photos are black and white, the opulence is evident. The collection also contains a seating plan for the Criterion Theatre, undated, which shows capacity for 700 theatre goers.

The theatre was demolished in 1935, but the fronting Criterion Hotel was rebuilt in an art deco style and still stands in Sydney. stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 33

Breakaway companies are nothing new in community theatre, but one such group, The Guild Theatre in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale, is celebrating its rich 70-year history in 2022. Founding member Ivan Dennis spoke to Neil Litchfield.

The costume ladies from Rockdale Musical Society would stand at the rear of the cavernous Rockdale Town Hall in the early 1950s, telling the committee whether they could hear the auditionees or not, Ivan Dennis told me.

Only if you could bounce your voice off the back wall, did you stand a chance of getting a role, back in those premicrophone days.

That was a key factor behind the foundation, in 1952, of what subsequently became The Guild Theatre, now celebrating its 70th year.

Thirteen kilometres from the Sydney CBD, under the flight path of Kingsford Smith airport, Rockdale is home to three theatre companies. As well as The Guild Theatre, there’s Rockdale Musical Society, founded in 1939 and The Regals, founded in 1945 (after splitting from RMS) - all still operating.

“I had come back to Sydney from working for the Bank of NSW in Temora, where I belonged to the Temora Dramatic Society, and joined Rockdale Musical Society,” Ivan told me. ‘We had a good chorus and we were doing shows like The Vagabond King. As stage manager, I was on the committee, and I said, ‘what we need is something to train them to produce voices of timbre which carry.’”

When RMS Treasurer Joan Rice mentioned that her boss Hazel Plant had professional training in voice and elocution “that was it,” said Ivan. “The committee said ‘OK, get the group around you that wants to participate’. Hazel took the path of participating in the one-act play festival which the British Drama League used to run.”

That drama group, the Rockdale Musical Society Dramatic Class, was never intended as a breakaway, but rather as a training ground for younger actors to improve their stagecraft.

For the first venture, a program of four one-act plays performed at Carlton School of Arts, the performers built 34 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

their own scenery, improvised a stage with trestle tables and draped hessian down one side of the hall to create a dressing space.

“I built a stage at the Carlton School of Arts, where Rockdale Musical Society used to rehearse. Before that they had a little stage, about eight feet in depth, but it did have two wings on either side, with scenery painted on the back wall - a couple of gum trees, I think. Then we did a series of one-act plays.”

After about a year, having grown to nearly a dozen members, the group began staging three-act plays, the first being Ladies in Retirement.

“We did it in halls - church halls, scout halls, Masonic halls. We used to put the scenery up, then take it down after the show. We’d put the scenery in the back of one of the members’ trucks, put it in somebody’s grandmother’s garage, then go to work the following morning.

“Hazel did get results. We started winning awards at one-act drama festivals and getting honourable mentions in Eisteddfods.”

The split with Rockdale Musical Society came in 1958, when the powers that be at RMS wanted to have a say in casting the plays.

“Hazel said, ‘No, I’m the director!’ and a clash developed. They had a public meeting. The new group was called the Illawarra Drama Guild. There was a good roll up, but a few people left after they learned that Hazel, who was appointed director, had the right to cast the plays. It was one of the best things Hazel ever did.”

Later that year the group’s production, The Hasty Heart, won the British Drama League Festival.

To start with, the company didn’t have a permanent home. On one occasion they even had to move at one night’s notice.

“When we did Seagulls Over Sorento, we all dressed in the same dressing room. The play was very successful but after the third night of the run, we were served with a deputation from the Congregational churchwardens, who said you can’t perform here for the rest of the season. I passed the guy over to Hazel, who asked why. He said, ‘It’s come to our notice that both sexes are using the one

dressing room.’ The guy retreated 10 feet while Hazel was talking to him. She defended our morals and our virtue, but he said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been directed by the church committee’.”

The play was moved to another church hall for the following night’s performance. “The Catholic priest thought it was all a huge joke and said, ‘Yeah, you can use the stage up here.’ It was a beaut stage - much better than one we had.”

The audience was ferried to the new venue in the cast members’ parents’ cars.

In a final touch to that eventful season, the production later received an award.

During the 1960s, as the company searched for a permanent home, an opportunity arose. The front part of the Rockdale Community Hall, near the local railway station, was rented out as a billiard saloon, but Rockdale Council was having trouble with the tenants.

“It was an unruly management, and the Council was anxious to get rid of them. They asked, ‘Would you be interested?’ We said ‘Yes, too right!’ When we asked, ‘Can we alter this?’ they said, ‘Yes you can.’”

So, in 1965, after many negotiations with the Council, the Rockdale Community Hall in Walz Street was secured with a weekly rental fee of 10 shillings. Thus, with 36 members and community fundraising efforts, the long saga of converting a small hall into a modern intimate theatre began, with all the labour on the conversion carried out by members.

“Jim Searle, who was our resident architect, decided that we should raise the stage a bit. I gave them some advice on lighting because I used to be the improviser of lighting for the plays. We used to dress underneath the stage in the excavated pit. There was improvised lighting down there, all unlicensed, but it got us through the first couple of performances.”

Further plays, plus festival wins continued, along with ongoing renovations.

Eventually the other part of the building, which had continued to be occupied by the Rockdale Home Nursing Service, would become the company’s dressing rooms and green-room.

The Guild has performed a wide repertoire of plays including drama, comedy, classics, children’s plays, Australian plays, musical plays and Shakespeare - enjoyed by their strong subscriber base.

The comfortable, well-equipped Guild Theatre of today is a remarkable legacy of the past, retaining the building’s Federation character whilst possessing modern conveniences and technical necessities.

We look forward to telling more of the story of The Guild Theatre’s 70 years in an extended version of this story on our website.

Online extras!

Watch a brief history of The Guild Theatre. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/iscPSooULyk

Calendar Girls Playing at The Guild Theatre, Rockdale from May 13 to June 11. guildtheatre.com.au stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 35

Following the heartbreak of COVID-19 cancellations, Geelong theatre company CentreStage is bursting back into the theatre with a production of Les Misérables.

continue what we love.”

Now the company is back with a season of Les Misérables, which is breaking their box office records.

In March 2020, CentreStage was On what would have been the Shaun Kingma will play Javert, a set for a successful season of West original opening night, the cast came role he has portrayed four times, Side Story which was earmarked to be together for a virtual drink, and to including once with a broken foot. He the final production in the Geelong watch the video of their final has won multiple awards for his Performing Arts Centre before it was rehearsal. performances.

CentreStage attempted to re-stage demolished and rebuilt.

“I feel like Les Misérables has been Like the rest of the world, things the production the following January a part of my life for such a long time came to a shattering halt.

(2021) at the 1400 seat Costa Hall. now - from listening to the double Producer David Greenwood said “Everything was looking great, record album at 13 years of age, to the company took a two hundredhowever we were guided by the 30-odd years later, where I again get philosophy of “all or no one”. One of the chance to explore Javert,” he said. thousand-dollar financial hit.

“I was adamant that the creative our lead roles gained a university “And there is always something team, technicians and set place in Queensland and was unable new to explore. It’s been wonderful to builders were all paid in full. They had to complete the show.” work with director Martin Croft, who put in the hard work and didn’t get to Instead of staging big musicals has been involved in Les Mis since its experience their reward. It was the during Victoria’s long lockdown, arrival in Australia. There is so much least we could do,” he said.

CentreStage grew its 5-18 year-old insight to tap into.”

The company offered education program from 90 students psychologists, motivation coaches and to more than 300, “to create some Les Misérables external support for the cast and financial sustainability and to come June 3 to 11 at the Costa creatives to manage their grief. out the other side of COVID-19 and 36 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Hall, Deakin University. geelongartscentre.org.au

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 37

Behind The Scenes With Debora Krizak

Welcome To The Moulin Rouge!

A Spectacular, Sparkling Diamond

Alinta Chidzey as Satine with the cast of Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

Photo: Michelle Grace Hunder.

38 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

As Sydney prepares to welcome Global Creatures’ Moulin Rouge! The Musical to the Capitol Theatre (with other cities to follow), I had the opportunity to interview Associate Lighting Designer Gavan Swift about the design elements that went into creating the theatrical masterpiece.

It’s a smorgasbord of sensory delights with the mantra of such a production being ‘more is more’. The set, lighting, sound, and direction are all designed to captivate and overwhelm the senses. From the moment the audience walk into the venue, they are presented with a vision that encompasses the entire theatre.

Moulin Rouge! is unlike any show that Gavan has worked on.

With a show of this magnitude, the first challenge was how to fit all the scenery and equipment into Melbourne’s Regent Theatre.

“It was tight,” Gavan states. “As for rehearsing the show and bringing it to life onstage, I wouldn’t say it was challenging; it was exciting. We were in the middle of another extended Melbourne lockdown. While theatres and businesses all around us were Alinta Chidzey as Satine and Des Flanagan as Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

Photo: Michelle Grace Hunder.

closed, Global Creatures managed to keep the production moving ahead and we rehearsed, documented, and honed the show up until the point when we were meant to have an audience. There are occasions when the mixture of circumstance and personnel combine to create something special, and the tech process was like catching lightning in a bottle. Luckily, when we were able to open, the audience response was testament to this process.”

Lighting designers are storytellers.

It’s their job to craft atmosphere, direct the audience’s attention, follow and enhance the emotion of a scene, and provide the basic illumination to assist the performers to tell the story.

The brilliance behind Justin Townsend’s original lighting design is that it beautifully crafts and supports this story and can provide the spectacle and energy that elevates the production to the next level.

I asked Gavan to describe how some of those design elements are captured in this pair of production stills from Melbourne’s beautiful Regent Theatre.

Inside The Elephant “The opulence of Satine’s boudoir inside the elephant is a great piece of theatrical design. The over-the-top décor evokes a place of seduction, where men of means are enticed and bewitched.

“It’s a challenging set to light as, working from downstage to upstage, the elephant cloth needs to be seen, and lit in a way which emulates the large elephant on stage left, without drawing focus away from the performers. Inside the elephant the atmosphere is warm and decadent.

Beyond the elephant, the garrets of Paris can be seen, bathed in a midnight blue light with the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background - a sky of stars with a romantic moon, dominated by the instantly recognisable ‘Lamour’ sign.

“Within this set there are scenes, romantic songs, a comedic song selling the new show to The Duke and then the transformation that carries the show towards the Act 1 finale. All needed different lighting treatment.”

Online extras!

Enter a world of splendour and romance in Moulin Rouge! The Musical youtu.be/vmUoIjyaIS8

(Continued on page 40) stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 39

Moulin Rouge! The Musical at Regent Theatre, Melbourne.

Photo: Michelle Grace Hunder.

Behind The Scenes With Debora Krizak

Moulin Rouge! The Musical Playing at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney from May 28 with a return season to Regent Theatre, Melbourne from August 2023. moulinrougemusical.com/australia (Continued from page 39)

Welcome To The Moulin Rouge “When the audience enters, they are met with Derek McLane’s incredible set that consumes the entire theatre. Every part of the theatre is touched by scenic detail, big and small, and is therefore also treated with light.

“The swags of red drapes are followed by swags of LED festoon, which also continue along the walls of the theatre right up into the dress circle. The faces of the proscenium, passerelle and access runways have individually circuited festoon bulbs, ready to explode with energy in the opening number. The stage and auditorium are bathed in red light.

The venue houselights are red. On stage right is the iconic Moulin Rouge windmill, and on-stage left is a large blue elephant, an icon repeated above the proscenium arch.

“Throughout the swags of red drape is an assortment of chandeliers and even the FOH speakers have design treatment to make them blend into the scenery.

40 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

“The gold columns and frescoes of the Regent Theatre’s architecture were all up lit with LED wash units to make the theatre itself part of the scenic design. There’s practically no part of the auditorium untouched by scenery and lighting on Moulin Rouge!”

Ahead of transferring Moulin Rouge! into Sydney’s Capitol Theatre, Gavan was halfway through tech week for Harry Potter Part One. I asked him what he loves the most about the industry and his contribution to the theatre.

“Personally, I love the variety of being a theatrical lighting designer.

Whether it’s the fun and flashy nature of productions like Saturday Night Fever and Mamma Mia!, or the drama of plays like Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story & The Ham Funeral, every show is different.

“I have been very fortunate to have had an extensive career covering all forms of live theatre and performance. I’ve designed in venues as small as the Hayes Theatre, right up to Marvel Stadium in Melbourne.

“As the musical theatre industry in Australia has evolved to a model that

Gavan Swift - Associate Lighting Designer, Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

largely imports productions from overseas, I have been fortunate to have the trust of several Broadway and West End lighting designers who have asked me to recreate their lighting for production in the Australia, New Zealand and Asian markets.

“As the industry rebounds after COVID-19, and starts to settle after the boost provided by RISE funding, it’s going to be interesting to see how the theatrical landscape looks in the next couple of years”.

It Keeps On DASHin’

Staging & Theatre Tech

Ross Hopkins from Creative Film and TV highly recommends a new hand held LED light, the Rosco DMG DASH. Don’t let its size fool you, the battery-operated DMG DASH can produce up to an incredible 500 lumens of output - all from a fixture that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

DMG DASH features Rosco’s patented six-chip MIX® Technology enabling it to produce the same colour-quality and True Rosco Color™ gel matches that other MIX lights do!

Each DMG DASH Kit ships with a set of beam-shaping accessories, including a flat diffuser panel, dome diffuser, eggcrate, and a gel holder for adding any Rosco gel or diffusion material desired DMG DASH is controlled from its on-board 1.3” OLED user interface, via the free myMIX® mobile app, or through optional wireless DMX by LumenRadio to provide CRMX and W -DMX control. It charges using a standard USB type-C connector and lasts three hours at 100% intensity.

The DMG DASH Quad Kit includes four fixtures and four sets of accessories. The kit also includes a DMG DASH LINK that can connect all four lights together into one unit!

DMG DASH is constructed from a lightweight aluminium alloy with an IP54 rating to provide a shockresistant and weatherproof housing.

It takes a thrashin’ and keeps on DASHin’!

Online extras!

Find out more about the versatile and portable DMG DASH. Scan or visit youtu.be/WkqZuZkimPs

For more information visit dash.rosco.com stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 41

Lighting Rig’s Quick Change Creating one lighting design and rig is a tricky enough challenge, but Pip Morey, a NIDA Third Year Technical Theatre Stage Management student, had to create one universal grid for two shows.

NIDA’s Festival of Emerging Artists is always frantic, and to make it more challenging I was working on two spectacular shows that were complete opposites. One was a contemporary take on Caryl Churchill’s Hotel, a piece of largely physical work which had a cast of 10, and the other, Burning, a new indigenous work that explored the struggles and trauma indigenous Australians have endured over hundreds of years, told through young eyes.

Each piece had obvious lighting needs, such as having a general wash state as well as some face light, but both shows also needed to be able to interact with the lighting, letting it be a part of their stories and not just a complementary factor. Given that the two shows were performed each night, only 40 minutes apart, I had to make the overhead grid as universal as possible. I was lucky enough to have a mixture of tungsten fixtures as well as some LED and moving light fixtures. This allowed me to leave room for experimenting with different colour combinations and shapes when designing the grid.

Hotel explored themes of loneliness and escape. It had ten characters, each of them with their own storylines and motivations. My lighting would need to support them as well as act as a clutch the audience could hold onto throughout the performance.

The first image (above right) was shot during the opening sequence.

Each character enters the one hotel room, one by one, with their own motivations. The woman in the image immediately walked into ‘the bathroom’ where the bright light comes on. It mimicked a real bathroom light, but also, because of how bright the light was, the audience was almost blinded for a moment. When the human eye became used to its surroundings, audience members were able to look 42 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Hotel.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

Hotel.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

into the mirror and see the woman’s reflection. A cold stare, one of questioning and doubt, which set up her character for the entirety of the production.

The second image (opposite page below) shows the scene we called TV, and I like to call it the calm before the storm. It is the last moment before we would explore some of the characters’ own personal hardships and struggles. Although this scene was set late at night, I still wanted the audience to be able to see the characters’ faces and reactions, their interactions with their respective ‘partner’ or the reactions they feel alone in a hotel room, whether it be a positive or negative experience.

The final image (above right) is from one of the final moments of the play. All the characters but one have left the hotel and we are left with a single woman who has been the most mysterious character thus far. The lights chosen drained all the colour from the stage. I thought that these (Continued on page 44)

Hotel.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

Staging & Theatre Tech

Hotel Director: Eve Beck Set and Costume Designer: Hayden Relf Sound Designer: Jessica Pizzinga Production Manager: Madeline Picard Stage Manager: Zoe Davis Head Electrician: Cameron Russell

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 43

Staging & Theatre Tech

Burning.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

lighting fixture for Burning, do a gel change in the boom lights and a focus would be perfect for the last act, as change in some of the overhead the character begins to explain her lighting. reason for being in the hotel, Burning is a new First Nations piece exploring themes of depression, which confronts the pain afflicted on loneliness and desire to disappear.

First Nations people. It plays with the Colour is so full of emotion and as a highs and lows of human emotion, lighting designer so much of my job is going between happiness, sadness, displaying how the characters are feeling onstage through the lighting.

Burning.

As show ends, essentially all the colour Photo: Lisa Maree Williams. is stripped from the stage, the costumes and even the actor, and we are left with this yellow monochromatic state which just displays different tones of the same yellow.

Both shows had completely different approaches to the script.

Hotel relied heavily on a sense of realism, whilst Burning existed in a blurred world, between real and metaphorical. The transition between the two shows was only 40 minutes.

We had to completely bump out one set and get in the new one, also allowing the cast warm-up time within that time frame. Within the lighting changeover, we would remove the set electrics from Hotel, add a floor (Continued from page 43)

44 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

anger and fear constantly. I knew that through my lighting choices I could enhance these feelings, both for the audience and for the cast onstage.

This scene (above) was set in the heart of country. Three women of indigenous descent are in their own personal ‘happy place’ - safe to do and act as they please. They danced

and played with each other, interacting where there was no sense of danger or threat. It was a joyous scene which marked the calm before the storm. I wanted both the audience and the cast to feel safe in this scene. That’s why I chose really warm side lighting which complemented the purple and pink tones of the overhead wash, in turn creating this almost imaginary world where the characters can be truly comfortable with themselves and each other.

This scene (opposite page below) was the peak of terror of the piece, depicting the rape and murder of one of the women. I chose to make it as cold and dead as possible. With the stark white lighting, there is no place for the women to hide - no safety, no shelter - they are truly exposed to their tormentor and eventual murderer. The main lighting choice was a bright light coming from the back of the stage; this acted as an almost blinding light for the audience and through that they saw the man enter.

This scene (right), which followed immediately, was a monologue spoken by our ‘woman’ character, describing how sick and tired black Australians are of the pain and discrimination they have faced for hundreds of years. The text was so powerful that I wanted the audience to be solely focused on our women and what they were saying. Each had their own spotlight, with our main women having two tones of blue and purple. Blue correlated with sadness and depression but also accentuated facial features and expressions. The audience could see every emotion shown and every pause they made throughout the monologue.

Lighting is a tool that can enhance a space and bring an audience into the space and the story. Doing one show at a time can be hard enough, but doing two shows in the same venue, at the same time, brought way more challenges than expected. By creating a universal grid that could work for both shows, I was able to focus more directly on the shape of the light and the story it creates.

Burning.

Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

Burning Author and Director: Amy Sole Set and Costume Designer: Angeline Meany Sound Designer: Jordan Magnus McCarthy Production Manager: Madeline Picard Stage Manager: Grace Sackman Head Electrician: Cameron Russell stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 45

Staging & Theatre Tech

Queensland Lights Shine Bright Speaking to Queensland’s top lighting designers, Beth Keehn puts the spotlight backstage in a new occasional series on the magic of stage lighting. This edition she speaks to Matilda Award winner Jason Glenwright.

The Little Red Company’s Your Song.

46 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Online extras!

Experience The Little Red Company’s provocative Your Song. youtu.be/AbcUId4S--4

To illuminate means to make something visible, bright, but also to clarify. Lighting designers do all of that on stage - and more. They can plan lighting rigs for a play, a dance performance, ballet, circus, puppetry, or an opera that can enthral and guide an audience through a dramatic story. They can also create spectacular light shows for an event, a performance space, building or landmark structure; and they collaborate closely with other members of the creative team to devise shows, create concepts and fill spaces with wonder.

Those who work in lighting design create magic. To learn more, I have been speaking to the best of Queensland’s professional practitioners, recognised at the 2022 Matilda Awards for excellence in their craft.

Matilda Awards Chair, Jan Irvine, explained: “Audiences will not necessarily be aware of what the lighting design does, but they will feel it. Lighting is not just throwing light on stage; it is creating magical moments defining time space and place. Lighting can draw attention to what we see in a moment and help us understand how it should be interpreted. Matilda Award judges look for lighting design that helps drive the progression of the story. We also consider the degree of difficulty and how the lighting works together with other design elements of a production.”

Jason Glenwright was this year’s winner for Best Lighting Design for his work on The Little Red Company’s Your Song, a tribute to Elton John.

But he also made the shortlist for lighting Queensland Theatre’s production of David Megarrity’s The Holidays - two very different shows.

Jason said: “Your Song is a very flamboyant lighting design - when you think of Elton John, it’s colourful, it’s rock and roll! And The Holidays is almost the opposite - a play about a family going to a beach shack. But for both, I come back to the same way of lighting a show - stick to the (Continued on page 48) stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 47

Shake & Stir’s The Twits.

Photo: Morgan Roberts.

(Continued from page 47)

narrative and the conceptual idea behind it.”

Coping with evolving technology is a big part of the lighting design role.

Jason pointed out: “Technology has increased vastly over the last 10 years - it feels like a new piece of lighting comes out every two weeks! But I have great relationships with some lighting hire companies so I can see what new tools are available. It is fantastic that we have LED lights and are able to create theatre that conserves energy and power.

Automation can also give us more flexibility to create more. In the past, the choice was more limited. These days we can create something like Roald Dahl’s The Twits (shake & stir) which is lit with a full LED and moving light show - which means we can shape everything and link lighting and sound cues with much more precision.”

On working with the other creative team members, Jason said: “Collaboration is the key in creating great theatre. While I am generally the last person to enter the rehearsal process, I will be a part of the initial discussions with the director, cast and crew, so the collaboration starts early.

The lighting and sound works hand in hand and we can use the technology to support the other creative elements.

“On Your Song, the lighting worked well for the style of the show - but also with the blocking, and with the music - it lit the costumes, it lit the actors beautifully and was well timed to the music. But also, importantly, the 250 lighting cues were well called by Rebecca Easterman, an amazing stage manager.”

Jason was an Emerging Artist with Queensland Theatre Company and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Technical production) degree from Brisbane’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT). But the first time he saw theatrical lights was at high school when he went with his mates to see the Rock Eisteddfod at Brisbane’s Entertainment Centre. He still believes 48 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

that supporting theatre at high school is important.

“I still go and work on high school shows to work with the kids and the lighting - at the moment I’m doing Singin’ in the Rain at Anglican Church Grammar School and Lord of the Flies at Brisbane Grammar School.”

Does he have any advice for young people interested in pursuing lighting design?

“No one in my family was ever in a theatre show or had a link to the theatre - but my Nanna owned a light shop that sold fittings for home interiors - and Dad owned a light shop too. So, while they are completely different, something I learned from my Dad that I take to my theatre work is - Only put light where you need it!”

Online extras!

See Jason’s work on display in Queensland Theatre’s The Holidays. youtu.be/01f3GUY1s38

Staging & Theatre Tech

Jason’s upcoming work: Roald Dahl’s The Twits shakeandstir.com.au Skyfall thelittleredcompany.com An Ideal Husband laboite.com.au

Queensland Theatre’s The Holidays.

Photo: Morgan Roberts.

The Little Red Company’s Skyfall.

stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 49

On Stage A.C.T. Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson. Canberra Rep. Until May 14. canberrarep.org.au Six The Musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Until May 15. Canberra Theatre. canberratheatrecentre.com.au

A.C.T. & New South Wales

COVID-19 Update COVID-19 still has the potential to affect performances. Readers are advised to monitor the prevailing restrictions and public health advice in their jurisdiction.

Check with the relevant theatre group, venue or ticket outlet for specific performance impacts, cancellation or rescheduling information.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Musical. By Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott. Until May 22. World of Musicals. May 22.

The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Canberra Theatre.

Arts Centre. theq.net.au canberratheatrecentre.com.au The Shadow Whose Prey The Terra Firma. QL2 Dance. May Hunter Becomes. Back to Back 26 - 28. The Playhouse, Theatre. May 11 - 13. The Canberra Theatre Centre.

Playhouse, Canberra Theatre canberratheatrecentre.com.au Centre. canberratheatrecentre.com.au 21 Foster St by Kate Walder.

Steps and Holes. May 26 - Jun Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 4. The Q, Queanbeyan adapted by shake & stir theatre Performing Arts Centre. co. May 17 - 21. The theq.net.au Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Robot Song by Jolyon James.

Centre. canberratheatrecentre.com.au Arena Theatre Company. Jun 9 - 11. The Q, Queanbeyan

50 Stage Whispers

Performing Arts Centre. theq.net.au

The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Queanbeyan Players Inc. Jun 24 Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph - Jul 3. The Q, Queanbeyan Kesselring. Canberra Rep. Jun 9 Performing Arts Centre.

- 25. canberrarep.org.au theq.net.au The Initiation by Caty Petocz.

New South Wales Canberra Youth Theatre. Jun 15 - 19. The Courtyard Studio, Wayside Bride by Alana Valentine. Until May 29. Belvoir Canberra Theatre Centre. canberratheatrecentre.com.au Street, Upstairs Theatre. belvoir.com.au Three. Choreographed by Jack Lister, Melanie Lane and Light Shining in Buckinghamshire by Caryl Hofesh Shechter. Jun 24 - 25.

The Playhouse, Canberra Churchill. Until May 28. Belvoir Theatre Centre.

Street, Upstairs Theatre. canberratheatrecentre.com.au belvoir.com.au

Just $50 a month to reach thousands of theatre goers. Contact Stage Whispers for details.

On Stage

New South Wales

Teagan Wouters and Blake Appelqvist in Bonnie & Clyde, playing at the Hayes Theatre Co from June 17.

Telling the story of America’s most notorious bank robbers and lovers, the show features music by Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, Dracula), lyrics by Don Black and a book by Ivan Menchell.

Photo: Alex Wales.

Read more at bit.ly/38gpSnW The Great Gatsby. By Aaron Robuck, inspired by the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Viral Ventures and Immersive Theatre.

Ongoing. Wonderland Bar (formerly The World Bar), Potts Point. explorehidden.com

Footloose. Music by Tom Snow. Lyrics by Dean Pitchford.

Book by Dean Pitchford & Walter Bobbie. Bankstown Theatre Company. Until May 9.

Bryan Brown Theatre, Bankstown. bankstowntheatrecompany.com

Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Sport For Jove.

May 5 - 14. Seymour Centre. seymourcentre.com

Heathers The Musical by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe.

Based on the movie by Daniel Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward.

Waters. North Shore Theatre Sydney Theatre Company. Until An American in Paris. Music: Company. May 6 - 13. Zenith May 14. Drama Theatre, George Gershwin. Lyrics: Ira Theatre, Chatswood.

Sydney Opera House.

Gershwin. Book by Craig Lucas. northshoretheatrecompany.org sydneytheatre.com.au GWB Entertainment & The Puffs by Matt Cox. The Very Australian Ballet. Until Jun 12.

The Merry Wives of Windsor by Popular Theatre Co. Civic Theatre Royal, Sydney.

Playhouse, Newcastle. May 6 William Shakespeare. Until May americaninparis.com.au 21. New Theatre, Newtown.

14. newtheatre.org.au Son of Byblos by James Elazzi. civictheatrenewcastle.com.au Brave New Word Theatre Things I Know to Be True by The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Company. May 4 - 21. Belvoir Andrew Bovell. The Theatre on Race by Melanie Tait.

Street, Downstairs Theatre.

Highlands Theatre Group. May Chester. Until May 14. Cnr belvoir.com.au Chester & Oxford Sts, Epping.

6 - 14. Moss Vale Services theatreonchester.com.au Tell Me More Before The Sun Club. htg.org.au Explodes by Jacob Parker. Rock Unqualified 2: Still Unqualified Exit Laughing by Paul Elliott.

Bottom Productions. May 4 by Genevieve Hegney and Arts Theatre Cronulla. May 6 14. KXT - Kings Cross Theatre.

Catherine Moore. Until Jun 4.

Jun 11. 6 Surf Road, Cronulla. kingsxtheatre.com Ensemble Theatre. artstheatrecronulla.com.au ensemble.com.au Advertise your show on the front page of stagewhispers.com.au

Cosi by Louis Nowra. May 6 21. Maitland Repertory Theatre. 0466 332 766. mrt.org.au Sweeney Todd. Music and lyrics

by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Hugh Wheeler. Tamworth Musical Society. May 6 - 21.

Capitol Theatre, Tamworth. tms.org.au The Fine Art of Deception by Carl Caufield. Newcastle Theatre Company. May 6 - 21.

90 De Vitre Street, Lambton. newcastletheatrecompany.com.au Alice in Wonderland. Orange Theatre Company. May 6 - 15.

Orange Civic Theatre. orangetheatreco.com.au Ghosting the Party by Melissa Bubnic. Griffin Theatre Company. May 6 - Jun 4. SBW Stables Theatre. griffintheatre.com.au City of Gold by Meyne Wyatt.

Sydney Theatre Company. May Stage Whispers 51

On Stage 7 - Jun 11. Wharf 1 Theatre. sydneytheatre.com.au Black Cockatoo by Geoffrey Atherden. Ensemble Theatre.

Cessnock Performing Arts Centre, May 7 & Civic Theatre, Newcastle, May 21 - 22. ensemble.com.au A Letter for Molly by Brittanie Shipway. Ensemble Theatre.

May 9 - Jun 4. ensemble.com.au

New South Wales

May 12 - Jun 4. Old Fitz Theatre. redlineproductions.com.au Calendar Girls by Tim Firth. The Guild Theatre, Rockdale. May 13 - Jun 11. (02) 9597 4558. guildtheatre.com.au Trial by Jury plus Gilbert and Sullivan favourites. Players Theatre, Port Macquarie. May 13 - 29. playerstheatre.org.au

4. Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill. paviliontheatre.org.au

Theatre, Newcastle. civictheatrenewcastle.com.au

Chicago. Music and Lyrics by Fred Ebb and John Kander.

Book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Blackout Theatre Company. May 13 - 22.

Pioneer Theatre, Castle Hill. blackouttheatre.com.au

The King and Guy. Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Guy Noble with special guest Josh Piterman.

May 17. City Hall, Newcastle. civictheatrenewcastle.com.au

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, adapted for the stage and presented by shake & stir Violet. Music by Jeanine Tesori. theatre co. May 14. Civic Robot Song. Arena Theatre Book and lyrics by Brian Theatre, Newcastle.

Company. May 10 & 11.

Crawley. Lane Cove Theatre civictheatrenewcastle.com.au Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. Company. May 13 - 29. The riversideparramatta.com.au Performance Space, St Aidan’s, Mary Poppins. Based on the Longueville. book by P.L. Travers and the Chasing Smoke. Casus Theatre. lanecovetheatrecompany.com Walt Disney Film. Music and May 11 - 14. Riverside Lyrics by Richard M. Sherman Theatres, Parramatta.

The Wizard of Oz - Jr Edition. and Robert B Sherman. Book riversideparramatta.com.au

By L. Frank Baum. Music and

by Julian Fellows. New Songs lyrics by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Dubbo Wrestling

by George Stiles and Anthony Harburg. Coffs Harbour Championship by Daniel and Drewe. Michael Cassel Group.

Musical Comedy Company.

James Cullen. Hayes Theatre From May 15. Lyric Theatre May 13 - Jun 5. Jetty Theatre.

Co. May 12 - Jun 11.

Sydney. coffsharbourmusicalcomedycompany.com hayestheatre.com.au marypoppinsmusical.com.au Earth & Sky by Douglas Post.

Ate Lovia by Jordan Shea. Red World of Musicals. Rokitz Castle Hill Players. May 13 - Jun Line Productions and kwento.

Entertainment. May 16. Civic

52 Stage Whispers

Ubu by Richard Hilliar. Tooth and Sinew. May 18 - 28. KXT Kings Cross Theatre. kingsxtheatre.com Become The One by Adam Fawcett. May 19 - 21. Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. riversideparramatta.com.au Before the Meeting by Adam Bock. White Box Theatre. May 19 - Jun 11. Seymour Centre. seymourcentre.com Ross Noble: On The Go. A-List Entertainment. May 19.

Cessnock Performing Arts Centre. cessnockperformingartscentre.com.au Disney Freaky Friday by Bridget Carpenter, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. Engadine Musical

Just $50 a month to reach thousands of theatre goers. Contact Stage Whispers for details.

On Stage Society. May 20 - 29. Engadine Parramatta.

Community Centre. 1300 616 patchtheatre.org.au 063.

Macbeth by William engadinemusicalsociety.com.au Shakespeare. Sport For Jove.

Annie. Music: Charles Strouse. May 25 - Jun 4. Riverside Lyrics: Martin Charnin. Book: Theatres, Parramatta.

Thomas Meehan. Albatross riversideparramatta.com.au Musical Theatre, Nowra. May Lysistrata by Aristophanes, 20 - 29. Shoalhaven translated by Michael Ewans.

Entertainment Centre.

Stray Dogs Theatre / Newcastle amtc.org.au Theatre Company 2022 Indie Roger and Julie by Benjamin Season. May 25 - 28. NTC Thorn. Armidale Drama and Theatre, Lambton.

Musical Society. May 20 - 28. newcastletheatrecompany.com.au The Armidale Playhouse.

Uncle Vanya by Anton adms.org.au Chekhov, adapted by Annie Cloudstreet. Glenbrook Players Baker. HER Productions. May Inc. May 20 - 28. Glenbrook 25 - 29. The Lock-Up, Community Theatre.

Newcastle. glenbrookplayers.com.au herproductions.com.au High School Musical. Book by David Simpatico. Hills Musical Theatre Company. May 20 28. Model Farms High School Auditorium. hillsmtc.com ZOOM. Patch Theatre. May 24 - 26. Riverside Theatres,

New South Wales Company. May 26 - 28. Civic Theatre, Newcastle. civictheatrenewcastle.com.au

Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchison. Pymble Players Inc. Jun 8 - Jul 2. (02) 9144 1523. pymbleplayers.com.au

Ben Hur by Patrick Barlow. Woy Woy Little Theatre. May 27 Ulster American by David Jun 12. The Peninsula Theatre, Ireland. Outhouse Theatre Co. Jun 8 - 11, Riverside Theatres, Woy Woy. woywoylt.com Parramatta, Moulin Rouge. Book by John riversideparramatta.com.au & Logan. Presented by Carmen Jun 15 - 18, Seymour Centre, Pavlovic, Gerry & Val Ryan and seymourcentre.com Global Creatures. From May Chicago - The Musical. Music 31. Capitol Theatre, Sydney. moulinrougemusical.com/australia by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Sexual Misconduct of the Fosse. Chookas Entertainment.

Middle Classes by Hannah Jun 8 - 12. Civic Playhouse, Moscovitch. Jun 2 - Jul 10.

Newcastle. (02) 4929 1977.

Belvoir Street, Upstairs Theatre. civictheatrenewcastle.com.au belvoir.com.au Cleansed by Sarah Kane. Red When The Rain Stops Falling by Line Productions and state of Andrew Bovell. Campbelltown unrest. Jun 9 - 24. Old Fitz The Peach Season by Debra Theatre Group. Jun 3 - 18.

Theatre.

Oswald. Blackheath Theatre Town Hall Theatre, redlineproductions.com.au Company. May 26 - 29.

Campbelltown. ctgi.org.au blackheaththeatrecompany.com Othello by William Short Sharp Theatre. Jun 5 Shakespeare. Sport For Jove.

Dale and Kevin Go To Heaven 25. Riverside Theatres, Jun 9 - 17. Seymour Centre.

by Jared Mainey and Theo Rule. Parramatta. seymourcentre.com The Objectively Good Theatre riversideparramatta.com.au

Advertise your show on the front page of stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 53

On Stage Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow.

Cessnock Performing Arts Centre, Jun 9 & Civic Theatre, Newcastle, Jun 10 - 11, civictheatrenewcastle.com.au A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Joanna MurraySmith. Ensemble Theatre. Jun 10 - Jul 16. ensemble.com.au Friends! The Musical Parody.

SK Entertainment. Jun 10 - 18.

Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. riversideparramatta.com.au

New South Wales & Queensland

the board game from Hasbro, Inc., written by Sandy Rustin.

Ballina Players. Jun 17 - 26.

Ballina Players Theatre, Ballina. ballinaplayers.com.au The Female of the Species by Joanna Murray Smith. Hunters Hill Theatre. Jun 17 - Jul 3.

Club Ryde. 9879 7765 or huntershilltheatre.com.au

Parramatta. riversideparramatta.com.au Les Misérables. By ClaudeMichel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer. Additional Material by James Fenton.

Armidale Drama and Musical Society. Jun 24 - Jul 16.

Michael Hoskins Theatre, The Armidale School. adms.org.au

The Les Darcy Show by Jack Hibberd. Newcastle Theatre Charlie and the Chocolate Company. Jun 17 - Jul 2.

Factory. Based on the novel by newcastletheatrecompany.com.au Roald Dahl. Book by David Greig. Music by Marc Shaiman.

Horses. Based on They Shoot The Sound Effects Show.

Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Horses, Don’t They? By Horace Hunter Drama students.

Shaiman. Noteable Theatre Cessnock Performing Arts McCoy. KUNST. Jun 15 - 25.

Company. Jun 24 - Jul 9. The Belvoir Street, Downstairs Centre, June 14. Civic Concourse Theatre, Theatre. belvoir.com.au Playhouse, Newcastle. Jun 18 Chatswood.

26. hunterdrama.com.au Dubbo Wrestling noteabletheatrecompany.com H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Championship by Daniel and Golden Blood by Merlynn James Cullen. Hayes Theatre Sullivan. Rockdale Opera Tong. Griffin Theatre Company.

Co. Jun 16 - 25. Riverside Company. Jun 18 - 26.

Jun 24 - Jul 23. SBW Stables Theatres, Parramatta.

Rockdale Town Hall.

Theatre. griffintheatre.com.au rockdaleopera.com.au riversideparramatta.com.au Top Coat by Michelle Law. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bonnie & Clyde. Book by Ivan Sydney Theatre Company. Jun Menchall, lyrics by Don Black Anne Brontë, adapted by 25 - Aug 6. Wharf 1 Theatre. and music by Frank Wildhorn. Emme Hoy. Sydney Theatre sydneytheatre.com.au Company. Jun 21 - Jul 16.

Joshua Robson Productions.

From Jun 17. Hayes Theatre Co. Roslyn Packer Theatre.

In The Next Room (The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl. Jun 29 - Jul hayestheatre.com.au sydneytheatre.com.au 17. Maitland Repertory Clue On Stage. Adapted from Othello by William Theatre. 0466 332 766.

Shakespeare. Sport For Jove. the Paramount Pictures film mrt.org.au written by Jonathan Lynn and Jun 21 - 24. Riverside Theatres,

Moon Rabbit Rising. Inspired by the legend of 后羿 (Hou Yi) and 嫦娥 (Chang’e). Little Eggs Collective. Jun 29 - Jul 10.

Belvoir Street, Downstairs Theatre. belvoir.com.au Normal by Katie Pollock.

Hunter Drama’s Actors Company. Civic Playhouse, Newcastle, June 30 - July 2. hunterdrama.com.au Queensland Disney’s Frozen. Music & Lyrics

by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Book by Jennifer Lee. Disney Theatrical. Lyric Theatre, QPAC. Until May 8.

136 246. frozenthemusical.com.au Searching For Dr. Branovic by David Tristram. Mousetrap Theatre, Redcliffe. Until May 15. (07) 3888 3493. mousetraptheatre.asn.au Sweet Charity by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields. Gold Coast Little Theatre, Southport. Until May 21. (07) 5532 3224. gclt.com.au Cherish by Ken Duncan. Cairns Little Theatre. Until May 7.

Rondo Theatre, Cairns. 1300 855 835. therondo.com.au Alice - A Journey Through Wonderland by Connor Clarke and William Toft. Brisbane Arts Theatre. Until May 21. (07) 3369 2344. artstheatre.com.au Mark Vincent & Mirusia in Concert. Concert Hall, QPAC. May 5. 136 246. qpac.com.au Speed: The Movie, The Play.

Powerhouse, Brisbane. May 5 29. (07) 3358 8622. brisbanepowerhouse.org Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton.

Growl Theatre. May 6 - 21. growltheatre.org.au Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

Phoenix Ensemble, Beenleigh.

May 6 - 28. (07) 3103 1546. phoenixensemble.com.au

54 Stage Whispers

Just $50 a month to reach thousands of theatre goers. Contact Stage Whispers for details.

On Stage

Queensland

Jersey Boys is the true-life story of how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey became Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons - one of the most successful bands in pop music history. They wrote their own songs, sold 175 million records worldwide, and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their countless worldwide hits.

Will Hanley as Frankie Valli and Melanie Ott as Mary Delgado, his first wife, will lead the cast of CLOC’s upcoming production at the National Theatre St Kilda from May 13 to 28.

Photo: Ben Fon. cloc.org.au

Teddy Tahu Rhodes & Josh Pieterman In Concert. Concert Hall, QPAC, May 7, 136 246, qpac.com.au & Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, May 11, 1300 655 299. empiretheatre.com.au Three. Australasian Dance Collective. Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, May 10, 1300 655 299, empiretheatre.com.au & Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, Bundaberg, 20 May, (07) 4130 4100. whatsonbundaberg.com.au Potted Potter. Playhouse, QPAC. May 10 - 15. 136 246. qpac.com.au Once in a Blue Moon by John Dole. Ipswich Little Theatre.

May 12 - 28. (07) 3812 2389. ilt.org.au The 13-Storey Treehouse by Richard Tulloch, adapted from the book by Andy Griffiths and

Terry Denton. Gardens Theatre, 27. Winton, Longreach, 0435 591 721.

Brisbane. May 12 - 15.

Barcaldine, Tambo, Blackall and centenarytheatre.com.au gardenstheatre.qut.edu.au Windorah. oq.com.au 9 to 5 The Musical by Dolly We Will Rock You by Queen Skyfall (James Bond Music).

Patron and Patricia Resnick. and Ben Elton. The Spotlight Naomi Price and Luke Kennedy. Crossroads Live. From May 22.

Theatrical Company, Benowa, Playhouse, QPAC. May 18 - 21. Lyric Theatre, QPAC. 136 246.

Gold Coast. May 13 - Jun 11.

136 246. qpac.com.au qpac.com.au (07) 5539 4255.

Noosa One Act Play Festival.

Mozart & Britten. Australian spotlighttheatre.com.au Noosa Arts Theatre. May 19 Chamber Orchestra. Concert The Scarlet Pimpernel - A Radio 28. (07) 5449 9343.

Hall, QPAC. May 23. 136 246.

Play. Nash Theatre, New Farm. noosaartstheatre.org.au qpac.com.au May 14 - Jun 4. (07) 3379 Edward The Emu. Monkey Baa. The Real Inspector Hound by 4775. nashtheatre.com Tom Stoppard. Villanova Empire Theatre, Toowoomba.

The King and Guy. Teddy Tahu Players. May 20 - 22. Ron May 23 - 24. 1300 655 299.

Rhodes & Guy Noble. May 14. Hurley Theatre, Seven Hills. (07) empiretheatre.com.au Moncrieff Entertainment 3395 5168.

Four Seasons Reimagined.

Centre, Bundaberg. (07) 4130 villanovaplayers.com Camerata. Empire Theatre, 4100.

Mozart’s Requiem. Queensland Toowoomba. May 25. 1300 whatsonbundaberg.com.au Symphony Orchestra. Concert 655 299.

Heroes and Revolutionaries. empiretheatre.com.au Hall, QPAC. May 20 - 21. 136 Queensland Symphony 246. qpac.com.au Inner Worlds. Queensland Orchestra. Concert Hall, QPAC. Unnecessary Farce by Paul Youth Orchestra. Concert Hall, May 15. 136 246.

Slade Smith. Centenary Theatre QPAC. May 26. 136 246. qpac.com.au Group. May 21 - Jun 11. qpac.com.au Festival Of Outback Opera.

Community Centre, Chelmer.

Opera Queensland. May 18 -

Advertise your show on the front page of stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 55

On Stage

Queensland

Castle Hill Players present the crime thriller Earth & Sky,

by Douglas Post, at the Pavilion Theatre from May 13 to June 4. The play’s heroine, Sara McKeon (played by Kate Jirelle, pictured) is thrust into a confusing world of contradictions and danger. She confronts it steadfastly in her naive search for the truth surrounding the brutal murder of her lover, David. paviliontheatre.org.au

Love Songs. Melinda Schneider.

Empire Theatre, Toowoomba.

May 27. 1300 655 299. empiretheatre.com.au

Philip Quast In Concert.

Aladdin by Natalie Trengrove Concert Hall, QPAC. Jun 5. 136 and Jim Fury. Tweed Theatre 246. qpac.com.au Company. Jun 11 - 26. Tweed Heads Civic Centre.

Jane Eyre. Adapted from tweedtheatre.com.au Mikis Theodorakis. Concert Charlotte Bronte’s novel. Shake Hall, QPAC. May 27. 136 246. & Stir. Jun 8 - Jul 2. Cremorne Behind The Barricades. Kasey qpac.com.au Theatre, QPAC. 136 246.

Chambers & Busby Marou.

Calendar Girls by Tim Firth. qpac.com.au Concert Hall, QPAC. Jun 13.

What’s New Pussycat by Judith Empire Theatre, Toowoomba.

136 246. qpac.com.au Prior. Brisbane Arts Theatre.

Li’s Choice. Queensland Ballet.

Jun 2 - 12. 1300 655 299.

May 28 - Jul 9. (07) 3369 Jun 10 - 25. Playhouse, QPAC. Human Nature. Concert Hall, empiretheatre.com.au QPAC. Jun 14 - 15. 136 246.

2344. artstheatre.com.au 136 246. qpac.com.au The Sound of Music by qpac.com.au Disney Sing-A-Long. Javeenbah Legally Blonde by Laurence Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Theatre, Nerang. May 28. (07) O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Mamma Mia! Music and Lyrics Queensland Musical Theatre.

5596 0300. javeenbah.org.au Heather Hach. Sunnybank

by Benny Andersson and Björn th Jun 3 - 12. 12 Night Theatre.

Theatre Group. Jun 10 - 25.

Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine Bernhardt/Hamlet by Therese queenslandmusicaltheatre.com (07) 3345 3964.

Johnson. Empire Theatre, Rebeck. Queensland Theatre.

Four Seasons. Queensland sunnybank2020.com Toowoomba, Jun 16 - 18.

Bille Brown Theatre, Symphony Orchestra. Concert 1300 655 299.

Southbank. May 28 - Jun 18.

Opera Gala. Queensland Hall, QPAC. Jun 3. 136 246 empiretheatre.com.au (07) 3010 7600.

Symphony Orchestra. Concert qpac.com.au Hall, QPAC. Jun 10 - 11. 136 Elgar & Mahler. Queensland queenslandtheatre.com.au Secret Bridesmaids’ Business by 246. qpac.com.au Symphony Orchestra. Concert The Last Five Years by Jason Elizabeth Coleman.

Hall, QPAC. Jun 17 - 18. 136 Robert Brown. La Boite. May Jane Eyre. Radio Play, based on Toowoomba Repertory Theatre, 246. qpac.com.au 30 - Jun 18. Roundhouse the novel by Charlotte Bronte.

Toowoomba. Jun 4 - 18. (07) Theatre, Kelvin Grove. (07) St Luke’s Theatre Society. Jun Freaky Friday. Book by Bridget 4632 8058.

3007 8600. laboite.com.au 10 - 25. (07) 3343 1457.

Carpenter. Music by Tom Kitt toowoombarep.com.au stlukestheatre.asn.au and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, from 56 Stage Whispers

The Addams Family. Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Book

by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Empire Theatre, Toowoomba. Jun 2 - 4. 1300 655 299. empiretheatre.com.au

Just $50 a month to reach thousands of theatre goers. Contact Stage Whispers for details.

On Stage the novel by Mary Rodgers.

Beenleigh Theatre Group. Jun 17 - Jul 2. (07) 3807 3922 beenleightheatregroup.com Oliver! by Lionel Bart.

Savoyards Musical Comedy Society. Jun 18 - Jul 2. IONA Performing Arts Centre, Wynnum West. (07) 3893 4321. savoyards.com.au

Queensland & Victoria

Robyn Archer: An Australian Songbook. Queensland Theatre. Bille Brown Theatre.

Jun 29 - Jul 9. (07) 3010 7600. queenslandtheatre.com.au Victoria Girl From the North Country.

Book by Conor McPherson.

Songs by Bob Dylan. Until June 4. Comedy Theatre, Melbourne. northcountry.com.au

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. By Jack Thorne. Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling. Reimagined one-part production.

From May 4. Princess Theatre, Melbourne. au.harrypottertheplay.com La Traviata by Verdi. Opera Australia. May 4 - 28. State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne. opera.org.au

Rick Elice. CLOC. May 13 - 28.

The National Theatre Melbourne. cloc.org.au The Odd Couple by Neil Simon.

The Mount Players. May 13 29. Mountview Theatre, Macedon. themountplayers.com

Mamma Mia! Music and Lyrics

by Benny Andersson and Björn The School for Scandal by Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Johnson. Williamstown Musical Villanova Players. Jun 18 - 26.

Pieces of Shit by Bronte Theatre Company. May 13 Hamilton. Book, Music and Ron Hurley Theatre, Seven Hills.

Charlotte and Leigh Scully. May Jun 4. Centenary Theatre Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

9 - 14. The Butterfly Club.

(07) 3395 5168.

Williamstown. wmtc.org.au Inspired by the book Alexander villanovaplayers.com thebutterflyclub.com Hamilton by Ron Chernow.

Fast Food by Morgan Rose. Red A Moment in Time. Southern Michael Cassel Group.

Finn & Lachie: A Show About Stitch. May 13 - June 5.

Cross Soloists. Concert Hall, Ongoing. Her Majesty’s Me. The Butterfly Club. May 9 - redstitch.net QPAC. Jun 19. 136 246.

Theatre, Melbourne.

14. thebutterflyclub.com The Return by John Harvey. qpac.com.au hamiltonmusical.com.au Waiting......For?...... Created by Malthouse Theatre. May 13 Penn & Teller. Playhouse, Hamlet by William Lloyd Jones and The Ensemble. Jun 4. Merlyn Theatre.

QPAC. Jun 22 - Jul 3. 136 246. Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare. O.T.H.A.N. Theatre Company. malthousetheatre.com.au qpac.com.au Until May 14. Fairfax Studio, May 11 - 15. La Mama HQ. Lohengrin by Wagner. Opera Arts Centre Melbourne. lamama.com.au Peter and the Wolf. Music by Australia. May 14 - 28. State artscentremelbourne.com.au Sergei Prokofiev. Queensland Jersey Boys. Music and lyrics by Theatre, Arts Centre Ballet, My First Ballet 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog.

Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe.

Melbourne. opera.org.au production. Jun 24 - Jul 2.

Mordialloc Theatre Co. Until Book by Marshall Brickman and May 14. Shirley Burke Theatre.

Thomas Dixon Centre, West End. (07) 3013 6666. mordialloctheatre.com queenslandballet.com.au The River by Jez Butterworth.

Mad Piper. Orava Quartet. Jun Williamstown Little Theatre.

24. Empire Theatre Until May 7. wlt.org.au Toowoomba. 1300 655 299.

The Heartbreak Choir by Aidan empiretheatre.com.au Fennessy. Melbourne Theatre Broadway Sing-A-Long.

Company. Until May 28.

Javeenbah Theatre, Nerang.

Southbank Theatre, The Jun 25. (07) 5596 0300.

Sumner. mtc.com.au

Advertise your show on the front page of stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 57

On Stage Darling Boy by Rupert Bevan.

May 16 - 21. The Butterfly Club. thebutterflyclub.com

Victoria & Tasmania

Who writes this stuff? by Britni Leslie. May 23 - 28. The Butterfly Club. thebutterflyclub.com

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, adapted and directed by Kip Williams.

Michael Cassel Group / Sydney Theatre Company. Jun 5 - Jul 17. The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne. artscentremelbourne.com.au

Town Hall. araratmusicalcomedysociety.com

Come Rain or Come Shine. A musical by Tim Fin, Caroline Keeping Up Appearances by Burns and Simon Phillips, Roy Clarke. MLOC Productions. based on the story by Kazuo May 25 - 28. Kingston Arts Ishiguru. Melbourne Theatre Centre. kingstonarts.com.au Company. Jun 20 - Jul 23.

Artemis: Utter Mess. Created Devastating Beauty by Southbank Theatre, The and performed by Artemis Murder Is An Art. Book, music Christopher Fieldus. Jun 6 - 11. Sumner. mtc.com.au Muñoz. May 17 - 22. La Mama and lyrics by Conor Beaumont.

The Butterfly Club.

She Wrote the Letter by Keiran HQ. lamama.com.au May 25 - 28. The Butterfly thebutterflyclub.com Club. thebutterflyclub.com Carroll. Jun 22 - Jul 3. La Low by Daniel Keene. Theatre Constellations. The Butterfly Mama HQ. lamama.com.au Works / Victorian Theatre Mefistofele in Concert by Boito.

Club. Jun 6 - 11.

Company. May 17 - 21.

Opera Australia. May 25 & 27.

Nobody’s Perfect by Simon thebutterflyclub.com Explosives Factory.

State Theatre, Arts Centre Williams. Malvern Theatre Company. Jun 24 - Jul 9. 1300 theatreworks.org.au Melbourne. opera.org.au The Last Hour. The Butterfly Club. Jun 6 - 11.

131 552.

The View From Up Here by POINT8Six by Tim thebutterflyclub.com malverntheatre.com.au Fiona Spitkowsky. Theatre Wotherspoon. May 25 - Jun 6.

Works / The Voice in my La Mama HQ. lamama.com.au Ken’s Quest. Adapted by Alan All The Rage by Dan X. Harris.

Theatre Works. Jun 28 - Jul 2.

Hands. May 18 - 28. Theatre Cass, based on the novel by Towards Zero by Agatha Works. theatreworks.org.au Cher Chidzey. Jun 8 - 19. La theatreworks.org.au Christie. Strathmore Theatrical Mama HQ. lamama.com.au The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Arts Group. May 26 - Jun 4.

Shirley Valentine by Willy Rattigan. Lilydale Athenaeum Strathmore Community Hall.

Mamma Mia! Music and Lyrics Russell. Williamstown Little Theatre Co. May 19 - Jun 4.

0419 591 517. stagtheatre.org by Benny Andersson and Björn Theatre. Jun 29 - Jul 16.

(03) 9735 1777.

Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine wlt.org.au Blackbird by David Harrower. lilydaleatc.com Johnson. Babirra Music Warrandyte Theatre Co. May Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Theatre. Jun 10 - 19. Karralyka ‘Til Beth Us Do Part by Jessie 27 - Jun 11.

Agency by James Goss & Centre, East Ringwood.

Jones, Nicholas Hope and trybooking.com/BYBOA Arvind Ethan David. Based on babirra.org.au Jamie Wooten. The 1812 the novel by Douglas Adams.

Legally Blonde by Laurence Theatre. May 19 - Jun 11. The Jersey Boys. Music and lyrics by Geelong Repertory Theatre Co. O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Lowe Auditorium.

Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe.

Jul 1 - 16. Woodbin Theatre.

Heather Hach. Wonthaggi 1812theatre.com.au Book by Marshall Brickman and 1300 251 200.

Theatrical Group. May 27 - Jun Rick Elice. Windmill Theatre geelongrep.com Rodgers + Hammerstein’s 11. wtg.org.au Company. Jun 11 - 26. Bunjil Cinderella. Crossroads Live Tasmania Disgraceful by Lucy Best. May Place. windmilltheatre.com.au Australia and Opera Australia.

Net Zero - Uni Revue 2022. Old 30 - Jun 4. The Butterfly Club.

From May 20. Regent Theatre, Every Lovely Terrible Thing by Nick Company. May 5 - 7, thebutterflyclub.com Melbourne.

Adam Fawcett. Theatre Works / Princess Theatre, Launceston & Owl and the Albatross by Paris Lab Kelpie Inc. Jun 15-25. cinderellamusical.com.au May 11 - 28. Theatre Royal, Balla. Theatre Works / Ryan Theatre Works.

The Sound Inside by Adam Hobart. oldnick.com.au Hamilton. Jun 1 - 11. Theatre theatreworks.org.au Rapp. Melbourne Theatre Freaky Friday The Musical.

Works. theatreworks.org.au Company. May 20 - July 2. Arts Ladies in Retirement by Edward Music by Tom Kitt. Lyrics by Maureen: Harbinger of Death Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Percy and Reginald Denham.

Brian Yorkey. Book by Bridget

by Jonny Hawkins and Nell Studio. mtc.com.au Mordialloc Theatre Company.

Carpenter. Based on the novel Ranney. Rising. Jun 1 - 12.

Jun 17 - Jul 2. Shirley Burke Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein.

by Mary Rodgers and the Beckett Theatre, Malthouse.

Theatre, Parkdale. (03) 9587 Brighton Theatre Company.

Disney Film. Devonport Choral malthousetheatre.com.au 5141. mordialloctheatre.com May 20 - Jun 4.

Society. May 13 - 28. Town Mor(t)ality. The Butterfly Club. SIX The Musical by Toby brightontheatre.com.au Hall Theatre, Parnapple Arts Jun 2 - 4. thebutterflyclub.com Marlow and Lucy Moss. From Centre. devonportchoral.org Mamma Mia! Music and Lyrics June 17.

Comedy Theatre, Interloper. ROOKE. May 14 by Benny Andersson and Björn Les Misérables. Music by Melbourne.

Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine 16. Earl Arts Centre, sixthemusical.com/australia Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer.

Johnson. Benalla Theatre Co. Launceston.

Original French text byAlain May 20 - 28. Benalla Ladies in Black. Book by theatrenorth.com.au Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel.

Performing Arts and Carolyn Burns. Music and Lyrics Australian Musical Theatre CentreStage, Geelong. June 3 - by Tim Finn. Ararat Musical Convention Centre.

Festival. May 18 - 22. benallatheatrecompany.org.au 11. Costa Hall.

Comedy Society. Jun 18 - 26.

Launceston. amtf.org.au centrestage.org.au Ararat Performing Arts Centre Everything is a Lie by Lauren Edwards. May 16 - 21. The Butterfly Club. thebutterflyclub.com

58 Stage Whispers

Just $50 a month to reach thousands of theatre goers. Contact Stage Whispers for details.

On Stage

Tasmania & South Australia

Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2022 returns to Adelaide Festival Centre and Her Majesty’s Theatre, featuring 377 artists and musicians across 97 performances including 14 world premieres and 15 Adelaide premieres.

Headlining the festival is Marcia Hines in The Gospel According To Marcia.

Photo: Daniel Boud.

Read our full coverage at bit.ly/3L1z529 Philip Quast - An Intimate Soiree. May 18. Earl Arts Centre, Launceston. theatrenorth.com.au

Go Back for Murder by Agatha South Australia Christie. Hobart Repertory The Turn of the Screw.

Theatre Society. Jun 10 - 25.

Composer: Benjamin Britten.

The Playhouse Theatre, Hobart.

Libretto: Myfanwy Piper. State playhouse.org.au Songs for a New World by Opera South Australia. Until Jason Robert Brown. Australian Swoon. John X Presents. Jun May 6. Festival Theatre, Musical Theatre Festival. May 17 & 18. Theatre Royal, Adelaide.

19. Princess Theatre, Hobart. theatreroyal.com.au adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au Launceston.

Peepshow. Circa. Jun 17, Friends! The Musical Parody. theatrenorth.com.au Princess Theatre, Launceston, SK Entertainment. May 4 - 15.

Here’s to the Ladies. Australian theatrenorth.com.au & Jun 22 Dunstan Playhouse.

Musical Theatre Festival. May adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au - 24, Theatre Royal, Hobart, 20. Earl Arts Centre, theatreroyal.com.au Hello, Dolly! Book by Michael Launceston.

The Year of Magical Thinking Stewart. Music and Lyrics by theatrenorth.com.au

by Joan Didion. Critical Stages Jerry Herman. The Metropolitan Musical Theatre The Sound of Musicals.

Touring. Jun 22 - 24. Theatre Australian Musical Theatre Company of SA. May 5 - 14.

Royal Studio, Hobart.

Festival. May 21. Princess theatreroyal.com.au Arts Theatre, Adelaide. metmusicals.com.au Theatre, Launceston.

The Little Mermaid. Victorian theatrenorth.com.au A Midsummer Night’s Dream State Ballet. Jun 24, Princess A Celebration of Australian

by William Shakespeare.

Theatre, Launceston, Musical Theatre. Australian theatrenorth.com.au & Jun 25 University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. May 6 - 15. Little Musical Theatre Festival. May & 26, Theatre Royal, Hobart, 20. Earl Arts Centre, Theatre, Adelaide University. theatreroyal.com.au Launceston. adelaide.edu.au/theatreguild theatrenorth.com.au Advertise your show on the front page of stagewhispers.com.au

Cathedral by Caleb Lewis. State Theatre Company South Australia. May 6 - 21. Space Theatre. statetheatrecompany.com.au Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Book

by Jeffrey Lane. Music and Lyrics by David Yazbeck. Hills Musical Company. May 6 - 21.

Stirling Community Theatre. hillsmusical.org.au SIX The Musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. May 21 - Jun 12. Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide. adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au The Socially Distanced Play by Damon Hill. Tea Tree Players.

May 25 - Jun 4. teatreeplayers.com Frozen The Musical. Music & Lyrics by Kristen AndersonLopez and Robert Lopez. Book

by Jennifer Lee. Disney Theatricals. From May 26.

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On Stage Festival Theatre, Adelaide. frozenthemusical.com.au Rella. Windmill Theatre Company. May 26 - Jun 4.

Dunstan Playhouse. windmill.org.au Festen by David Eldridge. Red Phoenix Theatre. May 26 - Jun 4. Holden Street Theatres. holdenstreettheatres.com Antigone by Elena Carapetis (after Sophocles). State Theatre Company South Australia. May 27 - Jun 11. Odeon Theatre. statetheatrecompany.com.au Betty Blue Eyes. Adapted from Alan Bennett’s screenplay by Ron Cowan and Daniel Lipman, with songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Therry Dramatic Society. Jun 2 - 11.

Arts Theatre, Adelaide. therry.org.au Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Jun 10 - 25. adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett. Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Jun 16 - 25.

Arts Theatre, Adelaide. adelaiderep.com Western Australia Freaky Friday by Bridget Carpenter, Tom Kitt and Brian York. Stirling Players. Until May 7. Disney musical. Stirling Theatre, Innaloo. stirlingplayers.com.au

South Australia & Western Australia

Spectrums of Chocolate Cake.

Created by Montserrat Heras.

HERA-S Productions. May 3 21. The Blue Room Theatre. blueroom.org.au

Theatre, Rockingham. rtcrockingham.com

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg. Murray Music and Toast by Liz Newell. Black Swan Drama Club. May 6 - 21.

State Theatre Company of WA Pinjarra Civic Centre. (08) 9255 with The Blue Room. May 5 3336. taztix.com.au 15. Studio Underground.

SIT! (Or I’ll Make You Sit) by bsstc.com.au Morgan Owen. Presented by Morgan Owen. May 17 - Jun 4.

A Cabaret of Golden Age The Blue Room Theatre.

Musicals by Chloe Palliser.

Roleystone Theatre. May 5 - 7. blueroom.org.au Armadale District Hall.

The Wizard of Aus. UWA Panto trybooking.com Society. May 19 - 21.

Pantomime for adults. Dolphin Three Tall Women by Edward Albee. Garrick Theatre Club.

Theatre, UWA. May 5 - 21. Garrick Theatre, ticketswa.com.au Guildford. trybooking.com or Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, (08) 9378 1990. adapted by Nick Dear. Stage Mamma Mia! Music and Lyrics Left Theatre Troupe. May 20 by Benny Andersson and Björn 29. Stage Left, Burt St, Boulder.

Ulvaeus. Book by Catherine stageleft.org.au Johnson. Stray Cats and The Full Monty by Simon Mandurah Performing Arts Beaufoy, based on the film of Centre. May 5 - 8. Mandurah the same name. Wanneroo Performing Arts Centre.

Repertory. May 26 - Jun 11. manpac.com.au Limelight Theatre, Wanneroo.

Firebringer by Meredith limelighttheatre.com.au Stephen, Mark Swiderski, Matt Once The Musical. Book by Lang, Nick Lang and Brian Enda Walsh. Music & lyrics by Holden. Melville Theatre Glen Hansard & Markéta Company. May 6 - 21. Melville Irglová. Black Swan State Theatre, Palmyra. (08) 9255 Theatre Company of WA and 3336. taztix.com.au Darlinghurst Theatre Company.

And Then There Were None by May 28 - Jun 12. Regal Agatha Christie. Rockingham Theatre. bsstc.com.au Theatre. May 6 - 15. The Castle Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert and Sullivan Society of WA. Jun 2 - 11.

Dolphin Theatre, UWA. ticketswa.com.au Grease by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Drew Anthony Creative. Jun 3 - 26. Planet Royale, Northbridge. ticketmaster.com.au The Sound of Murder by William Fairchildy. Old Mill Theatre. Jun 3 - 18. Old Mill Theatre, South Perth. oldmilltheatre.com.au

stagewhispers.com.au/stageresources 60 Stage Whispers

Moody by Ellen Hope Thompson and Tristan McInnes. Fonder Physical Theatre. Jun 7 - 18. The Blue

Room Theatre. blueroom.org.au Caress/Ache by Suzie Miller.

WAAPA 3rd Year Acting Students. Jun 9 - 15.

Roundhouse Theatre. waapa.ecu.edu.au Mack and Mabel. Book by Michael Stewart. Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. WAAPA Music Theatre and Music students. Jun 10 - 16. His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth. waapa.ecu.edu.au The Marvelous Wonderettes by Roger Bean. Primadonna Productions. Jun 10 - 12.

Fishtrap Theatre, Mandurah Performing Arts Centre. manpac.com.au Rise. Choreographed by Jenni Large, Laura Boynes and Kim McCarthy with Leanne Stojmenov. WAAPA 2nd and 3rd Year Dance students. Jun 10 16. Geoff Gibbs Theatre. waapa.ecu.edu.au Pull The Pin by Rebecca Fingher. Just Friends Theatre Company. Jun 14 - Jul 2. The Blue Room Theatre. blueroom.org.au Anything Goes. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Original book by P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton and Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse. New book by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman. Serasi Entertainment. Jun 16 - 25.

The Regal Theatre, Subiaco. ticketek.com.au And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Roxy Lane Theatre. Jun 17 - Jul 3. Roxy Lane Theatre, Maylands. (08) 9255 3336. taztix.com.au My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe. Alexandra Theatre. Jun 29 - Jul 2. The Regal Theatre, Subiaco. ticketek.com.au Dracula - A Comic Thriller starring Shirley Holmes and Jenny Watson by Ken R. Brown. Garrick Theatre Club.

Jun 30 - Jul 16. garricktheatre.asn.au

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Reviews

MTC’s Admissions.

Photo: Jeff Busby.

Online extras!

The cast and director of Admissions unpack the play’s meaning. youtu.be/rOeg56FekyU Admissions

By Joshua Harmon. Melbourne Theatre Company.

Southbank, The Sumner. Mar 6 - Apr 9.

SHERRI Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart) is in charge of ‘admissions’ at a ‘liberal’ private school in New Hampshire. She’s raising the percentage of black, Asian, and Latino students at the school and proud of it. Sherri and staff member Roberta (Deidre Rubenstein) argue over whether the photographs in the school’s promotional brochure are sufficiently ‘diverse’. Sherri’s husband Bill (Simon Maiden), the headmaster, agrees with all that until their very smart but garrulous son Charlie (William McKenna) fails to get into Yale, but his best buddy Perry who has a white mother, Sherri’s friend Ginnie (Heidi Arena), and a black father - does.

Charlie is incandescent with rage and a lot of politically incorrect vitriol comes exploding out. Sherri and Bill tuttut, but straight away think about what strings they can pull to get Charlie into another ‘good school’. Naturally, Sherri’s pal Ginnie is proud that son Perry got into Yale, but Charlie says Perry only got in because...

So, Admissions is a play about race and white privilege, but there are no black, brown, or yellow characters to argue their point of view. Harmon is saying to us, ‘Who benefits from white privilege? White folks.

So, let’s watch them stew in their own juice and see what comes out.’ Director Gary Abrahams reinforces the comedy with his great ability to physicalise thought and emotion - especially with Charlie. You know exactly how the kid feels even while you know he’s wrong. Or is he?

Admissions may make you squirm, get antsy, or, at best, feel uncomfortable - even while laughing.

Michael Brindley Wayside Bride

By Alana Valentine. Belvoir Street Theatre. Apr 2 - May 29.

ALANA Valentine gives voice to stirring stories of outsiders who, rejected by mainstream religion, chose instead to be married by Ted Noffs at his famous Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross.

In her familiar verbatim style, Wayside Bride also arcs across the real stories of those brides - divorcees, new migrants, interdenominational couples, street-walkers, strugglers, addicts and those brutalised by religion.

Valentine even puts herself onstage as playwright/ researcher, and in the guise of her mother who was also a Wayside bride. The opening scene with “Alana” (an evercurious Emily Goddard) interviewing her contrary mother, Irene (Sacha Horler), is a cracker.

Set designer Michael Hankin creates an unadorned open space, like a community hall, with piles of plastic chairs and a juke box. But it’s sometimes a challenge for co-directors Eamon Flack and Hannah Goodwin to find place and keep focus for these many rich stories, and some of the younger cast are underpowered.

Brendon McClelland is a standout as the methodically caring Ted Noff, as is Horler, also in the role of his wife Margaret, brilliantly furious at how Ted is treated by his Methodist overseers.

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 61

Belvoir’s Wayside Bride.

Photo: Brett Boardman.

Online extras!

Author Alana Valentine discusses the genesis of Wayside Bride. youtu.be/UEXh6ldUfNs

The delightful Rebecca Massey brings warm comedy, Maggie Blinco is a deranged veteran of the Cross, and Marco Chiappi is superbly varied as a sentimental addict, Methodist superior and upbeat gay survivor.

All are costumed with accurate period and some camp flair by Ella Butler.

Valentine reveres the detail and words of her living storytellers; it makes for a resonant and moving truth, but holds Wayside Bride back from a necessary tighter edit and more inventive connections. It’s more than two and a half hours, with interval, luckily most of it uplifting.

Martin Portus Snapshots From Home Play with songs by Margery Forde. Villanova Players.

Director: Maria Plumb. Musical Director: Rosemary Murray. Choreographer: Lynette Wockner. Ron Hurley Theatre, Seven Hills, Qld. Mar 5 - 20.

SNAPSHOTS From Home is ideal for community theatre and Villanova Players’ production, their second, captured the spirit, the fun, and the heartbreak of those stuck at home during the Second World War. Recordings of major events permeate the script Menzies announcing the war; Darwin being bombed; the 62 Stage Whispers

Japanese in Sydney Harbour; the dropping of the atom bomb and Victory in the Pacific Day celebrations.

Beth Allen, Tainika Kane-Topeka and Josephine Stockdale were an impressive girl-group a la The Andrews Sisters, with some great harmony on ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’, whilst Beth Allen, in solo mode, brought pathos to ‘That Lovely Weekend’ and was fun as a local girl who didn’t date the Yanks. Patrick Eavens was spoton as an ‘ocker’ Aussie soldier who hated the Yanks taking the Aussie sheilas, whilst Nikolai Stewart was a cocky G.I. who had no trouble landing the chicks and danced a swinging jitterbug.

I liked the way ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’ was used to poignantly reflect the digger’s thoughts about his wife at home. Some moments hit like a punch in the gut the Irish postmaster asking his customer to pass on a message to a woman in their street, ‘Your son’s dead’, and the returned digger with PTS sitting in a tram on his own crying.

It’s these moments that gave Snapshots from Home its currency and its emotional gravitas. Maria Plumb’s direction was unfussy and robust.

Peter Pinne

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Neil Gooding Productions’ Leap.

Photo: Grant Leslie.

Online extras!

Leap is a high-energy, exhilarating new dance show. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/ujdFw_ksqdQ

Leap Neil Gooding Productions. Choreographer: Amy Campbell. Riverside Parramatta - April 22 - 24, then touring NSW and Queensland.

IT is Amy Campbell’s aim to make “art that entertains, enthralls and is accessible”. Leap is all of that and more.

Campbell has ‘leapt’ into her imagination to fuse traditional and contemporary choreography with skilfully ‘re-imagined’ classical music, played live on a stage hung with multiple tendrils of silvery foliage.

Leap “enthrals” via the complexity of both the choreography and the textural tempos of the music.

Campbell exposes her own skill via the talents and expertise of the ten very talented performers.

All ten - Ashley Goh, Callum Mooney, Cassandra Merwood, Felicia Stavropoulos, Maikolo Fekitoa, Natalie Foti, Neven Connolly, Shontaya Smedley, Jervis Livelo and Ryan Ophel - are soloists in their own right, and they are given many opportunities to show that. But they also work together brilliantly as an ensemble, to tell the stories that Campbell and musical associate Victoria Falconer have synthesised.

Classical and contemporary dance can work together in so many ways, despite what ‘purists’ might say. Both

are dependent on symmetry and precision and both ‘speak’ to the audience in their own way. Put them together to much loved music - Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov - that has been slightly trweaked, and you have this exciting theatrical fusion of movement and sound that is totally “accessible”. Add a dramatic set and spectacular lighting and the production becomes even more exhilarating.

After 4 days at Riverside, the production moves on to a three month tour, taking the cast and musicians north from Wyong to Grafton, then on to Queensland, culminating in a performance in Mackay on 2 July.

What a great opportunity for audiences starved of live entertainment for two Covid-long years to see a production that literally sparkles in so many ways.

Carol Wimmer The Babushka Book Club Queensland Cabaret Festival. Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane. Mar 25 & 26.

PRESENTED by Little Match Productions, The Babushka Book Club is a fabulously funny cabaret combination of laughter and music, developed by its wickedly witty leading ladies - Alicia Cush, Judy Hainsworth and Laura

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 63

STARC Productions’ Constellations.

Online extras!

Watch scenes from STARC Productions’ Constellations. Scan the QR code or visit fb.watch/cB_VAWzLTj

Coutts - alongside director Bridget Boyle and designer Penny Challen, with piano and musical arrangements by Luke Volker (and Alicia Cush). This talented threesome’s stage experience shows in their command of an audience.

With this show they have come up with a winning formula using the familiar book club tropes to trigger many laugh-out-loud moments. This book club takes an irreverent look at romance, self-help, feminism, friendship, pinot grigio and kombucha with comedy and cabaret. The genius in the show is its simplicity. The dialogue from Alicia, Judy and Laura - playing book club versions of themselves - is very funny banter with the trio’s quips connecting a series of brilliant song mash-ups and unique musical interpretations that are the show’s strength.

The performers have fused together different book and song genres in a way that is pleasantly unexpected, intellectually satisfying and highly entertaining. From Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, to the Bronte Sisters and The Hunger Games and Twilight series, each book is met with a vibrant selection of songs, superb singing and witty banter.

Beth Keehn

64 Stage Whispers

Constellations

By Nick Payne. STARC Productions. The Bakehouse Theatre. Mar 30 - Apr 9.

STARC Productions, with Constellations, created an example of defining acting and directing, perfectly showcased in the (soon to be lost) Bakehouse Theatre.

STARC choose plays that showcase fine acting and pared down, significant meaning, and Tony Knight, Stefani Rossi and Marc Clement, supported by lighting guru Stephen Dean, deliver a 75 minute masterclass that challenges, informs, and delights. Knight uses a deft touch and it is patently obvious that this is a tight, collaborative partnership showcasing two of Adelaide’s finest and most disciplined actors.

Constellations is cleverly designed, allowing the play to be contextualised, and it enables audiences to relate to this complex, many faceted story. Written with sparse directions, Knight, Rossi and Clement make this many layered piece their own. The set is simple - a long folding trestle table and two chairs sit atop a square in which Science formulas create a carpet of facts and a very clear delineation between the two halves of the stage.

Described as a romance, it is much more. Rossi, as Marianne, is a physicist who holds the secret that gives

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Clock and Spiel Productions’ Freud’s Last Session.

purpose to the play and it is through her that we confront the notion of multiple universes that exist with, and without us; the notion of us living with time that is unchanged for us, but used in multiple ways by us.

Clement is Roland, a beekeeper - interestingly, we discover that the role of bees is to support and nurture the Queen Bee, symbolically defining Roland and Marianne’s intertwined roles and relationships.

The Bakehouse brings the actors and audience closely together and Clement and Rossi harness this, making every nuance, breath, flickering smile and moment of desperate grief starkly real and apparent. STARC are major contributors to innovative and memorable theatre.

Jude Hines Freud’s Last Session

By Mark St. Germain. Clock and Spiel Productions.

Directed by Hailey McQueen. Riverside Theatre, Parramatta. Mar 9 - 12.

IN Freud’s Last Session, playwright Mark St. Germain imagines a meeting between aging psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and C.S Lewis, creator of the Narnia fantasies.

Freud is a stickler for punctuality. Lewis is late. Freud is an atheist. Lewis is a born-again Christian. The tension fizzes! Finally, Freud’s dog announces Lewis’ arrival.

What ensues is a learned, rational debate - sprinkled with scholarly repartee and humour - about the existence of God. Both men are subtly defined in the writing - and the actors use the dialogue to explore the many dimensions of these colourful 20th century figures.

Freud, played by Nicholas Papademetriou, is in great pain following treatment for oral cancer. Papademetriou inhabits his age - and his suffering - with convincing belief but shows no frailty in his arguments or his humour. He listens carefully, considers every response, delivers it clearly, concisely - and watches for Lewis’ reaction.

Lewis, played by Yannick Lawry, is enthusiastic but also a little nervous, believing Freud has ‘summonsed’ him because of his criticisms of Freud’s paper on Paradise Lost.

Lawry builds both into his performance, as well as his respect for the older man. His Lewis is deferent but strong.

Under Hailey McQueen’s direction, they use the stage judiciously, taking each segment of the argument to different parts of the room, so that the set becomes

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 65

Kadimah Yiddish Theatre’s Yentl.

Photo: Jeff Busby.

integral to the tone and tenor of the debate. It is an exceptional production.

Carol Wimmer

Avigdor’s sadness, anger, and sexual frustration. The revelation is Jana Zvedenuik as Yentl/Anshl. She makes the constant tension and confusion in her deception both funny and touching.

Yentl Dann Barber’s simple but suggestive set functions as

By Gary Abrahams, Galit Klas & Elise Hearst, based on the every location the story needs, aided by Rachel Burke’s original Yiddish short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yentl lighting that evokes constantly changing emotions. the Yeshiva Boy. Developed by Evelyn Krape, Gary While giving full weight to Yiddish culture, learning Abrahams and Galit Klas. Kadimah Yiddish Theatre. Arts and law, this production also has a secular thread: finding one’s identity, sexual or otherwise. Yentl is a man in a Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio. Mar 12 - 26.

A MARVELLOUS, funny, moving, and very theatrical woman’s body. How could this happen? Even God makes version of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yiddish original story: a mistakes.

Michael Brindley story for our time of cross gender love and gender fluidity.

Yentl (Jana Zvedeniuk) disguises herself as the boy ‘Anshl’ so as to attend a yeshiva - a religious school. Already a The Boys

By Gordon Graham. Alchemy Artistic. Directed by Amy double sin. She meets Avigdor (Nicholas Jaquinot), another yeshiva student, the ideal companion and fellow Kowalczuk. Produced in affiliation with Shadowhouse PITS scholar - as long as he believes ‘Anshl’ is a man. He was and Sophie Benassi. ACT Hub, The Causeway Hall, Kingston. Apr 13 - 16. engaged to Hodes (Genevieve Kingsford); the marriage was called off, but he’s still in love (or lust) with her...

ARTISTIC’S first ever production, The Boys, is a Under Gary Abrahams’ masterful direction, the meticulously crafted exploration of masculinity at its most characters are conflicted, physical, flesh and blood beings. toxic. Loosely based on the events surrounding Anita The amazing Evelyn Krape (who initiated the project) is Cobby’s murder, the horror here is not in a depiction of Yeytser Ho’re or The Evil Inclination. She zips about the the murder, but in the hyper-real portrayal of male stage as the Narrator (often in Yiddish, with surtitles), brutality, an emotional landscape increasingly bulging warning with a devilish, dirty laugh that God gave us free with anger which erupts devastating all.

Director Amy Kowalczuk has coaxed exceptionally will, but ‘When you say A, you have to say B...’

Genevieve Kingston is the beautiful, naïve, charmingly realistic, nuanced characters from every one of the cast. clumsy Hodes. Nicholas Jaquinot catches perfectly that Earthy, frank and selflessness, Liz St Clair Long’s Sandra has an unconditional love for her boys that blinds her to quick, spikey habit of Jewish disputation, but also 66 Stage Whispers

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

their viciousness. Michelle (a firecracker of a performance

by Meaghan Stewart) is aggressively loyal to her boyfriend Brett, even as he treats her like dirt. Caitlin Baker’s Nola, pregnant by the youngest son Stevie, exudes hopelessness and low self-esteem. There is an open hostility between Michelle and Glenn’s girlfriend Jackie (Indy Scarletti), whose middle-class sensibilities Michelle interprets as snobbery.

And then there are the boys, Brett, Glenn and Stevie.

When the three first appear together, there is a sudden flood of palpable dangerous male energy, the effect of which is chilling and visceral. Alex Hoskison’s Brett is terrifyingly real. He looks like every guy you’ve ever seen psyching himself up for a fight, complete with what one audience member described as “dead eyes”. Blue Hyslop’s Stevie is spoilt, immature and heartless. Cole Hilder’s Glenn shows initial signs of humanity before being goaded into the maelstrom of Brett’s explosive violence and is revealed to be a monster.

The acts are interwoven with segments of stylised movement choreographed by movement director Michelle Norris, including the most violent scenes. Little realistic details - the way a woman shudders as she pulls on her clothing, or the posture of a man as he is being assaulted - keep the empathy with the victim.

Amy Kowalczuk’s rendering of this Australian indy theatre classic has a gut-wrenching clarity.

Cathy Bannister The Wilkins Trilogy - Part 1

By Peter Maddern. Adelaide Fringe. Goodwood Institute.

Feb 25 - Mar 6 ‘SOME thoughts sustain you; others can kill you,’ says Bert Wilkins, in another life-and-death situation. He faced a Turkish firing squad, survived severe frostbite and a polar bear attack, and then was fearless at the Western Front, where he earned the nickname ‘The Mad Photographer’ - from the Germans - all before he was thirty years old.

Peter Maddern’s script covers just a few years of the man’s adult existence in this first part of a trilogy. Stephen Schofield is outstanding as the almost-fearless explorer, on stage for the whole performance, alone but for the briefest of moments. He takes us on his journey with him, sharing every emotion: from his boyish excitement being chosen to be taking pictures, to his determination not to break the gaze of his gun-wielding captors, and many times along the way, to the edge of death so certain except that he’s standing here, recounting how he survived.

Schofield is supported with excellent sound design by Andrés Diez Blanco, the guns and shells of war reverberating around the auditorium. And in a brilliant exhibition of ‘less is more’, the images captured by Wilkins on his many journeys are used sparingly and with tremendous effect. Schofield sets the scene with his words and a simple prop camera, drawing us the image before the real picture fades in across the cyclorama.

This is exquisite storytelling in an extraordinary performance.

Mark Wickett The Darkening Sky Written and directed by Richard Murphet. Victorian Theatre Company and Theatre Works, St Kilda. Mar 16 26 RICHARD Murphet has a fascination for noir and pulp fiction. Here, Eloise Kent’s set design suggests Edward Hopper’s ‘Night Hawks’, stirring memories of black and white film noir movies. It’s briefly disconcerting that this complex tale is set in inner Melbourne, but why not?

There are images on the big screen behind the bar: the sea; a woman’s face, wreathed in cigarette smoke; vital information changing hands; a blood-smeared car interior.

James (Brian Lipson), a rumpled, nervous man tells us his mother Heather (Edwina Wren) disappeared when he was eight or nine. His fragmented, unreliable memories give us three time frames: James’ present, Little Jamie, and Young Jamie (Matthew Connell), aged 17 or eighteen. Young Jamie falls hard for sexy Chantal St Clair (Rebekah Hill). She’s in danger, but she never quite explains why. Meanwhile, PI Tony (Tom Dent) is commissioned by his boss Phyllis (Anthea Davis) to find a woman called...Chantal St Clair. Tony’s search is all red herrings and dead ends. His notes are data; his data becomes information; and that information becomes...

Murphet’s challenge is to keep us with him. We slide between those three time frames that intersect as well.

But he’s a skilled director, who moves his cast briskly around his noirish streets. Some cast necessarily double up, but the multiple characters are perfectly delineated.

This’s a play you chew over, unravel, and reassemble later, on the way home. You see how the strands are thematically linked, how memory is unreliable, and dead ends are in the nature of things, and how Murphet has used the genre tropes in his own way.

Michael Brindley

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Stage Whispers 67

Heroes Of The Fourth Turning

By Will Arbery. Outhouse Theatre Company. Directed by Craig Baldwin. Seymour Centre, Sydney. Mar 31 - Apr 23.

THIS is an exceptional production of an important modern play. Chekhovian in its comic view of the blighted lives of its characters, it reveals what’s going on in the minds of the followers of that damned modern hero Donald Trump.

Will Arbery’s thrilling new American play has been nailed by director Craig Baldwin. In February 2017, four old classmates from Wyoming’s red-hot-Catholic Transfiguration College, members of the religious right, meet to celebrate the appointment of a loved professor to the school presidency.

Justin (Jeremy Waters), his revolver forever riding on the back of his jeans, shoots and kills a stag. That act sets the scene for what follows.

Kevin (Eddie Orton), half-cut by booze, earnestly wrestles with the Virgin Mary’s vaunted place among staff and students. His drunken thoughts lead him in various directions - infatuation, self-pity, tantrum, wonderment.

Teresa (Madeleine Jones), a zealous, almost manic professional conservative, seems ready to jump on a bus to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Miss Jones’ dynamic performance is not to be missed.

Emily (Micaela Ellis) is a ball of rage and yearning, insisting that Teresa’s abortionist friends can still be good people, but her own debilitating illness tests her faith and her sense of self as a woman.

These four battle it out in the first act before Gina (Kate Raison) - Emily’s Mum - the new president of Transfiguration College - makes her entrance and bumps the intensity up a couple of notches.

It’s all so frighteningly well-written - lyrical, scary and brave. Will Arbery is certain of wide acknowledgement for this thrilling work.

Frank Hatherley Blithe Spirit

By Noël Coward. Sydney Theatre Company. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Mar 21 - May 14.

PAIGE Rattray’s exquisitely comic version of Blithe Spirit is far better than most of the lightweight pandemic theatre recently programmed to cheer us up. Interestingly, Noël Coward wrote his acclaimed farce during lockdown in the depths of wartime in 1941 (and in just six days).

In an affluent British country house a famous novelist, Charles Condomine, and his bored wife, Ruth, invite the local doctor and his wife to a séance. Madame Arcati mistakenly draws back the spirit of Charles’ first wife, the rascally Elvira, and everything gets out of hand.

Rattray’s genius is in her casting. Matt Day is the production’s restrained centre as the pompous Charles, while Bessie Holland as Ruth is a mistress of comic precision and boldness; matched only by her hopeless and diminutive lookalike maid, Edith (Megan Wilding).

The reliable Tracy Mann excels as the red whiskered, well kilted Dr Bradman, while Nancy Denis bustles as his 68 Stage Whispers

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Online extras!

Blithe Spirit is ghostly, glamorous and outrageously hilarious. Scan or visit youtu.be/JTqDc6HLdV8 STC’s Blithe Spirit.

Photo: Prudence Upton.

wife. And Brigid Zengeni is a delight as the mystical if heartily practical Madame Arcati.

Courtney Act (the alter ego of Shane Jenek) is the ethereal if petulant Elvira, striking in grace and physicality.

Her acting however misses an essential truth, and her accent is inappropriately Australian. A unified cast voice is essential, in this case, a cut crystal British accent which cloaks so much of the play’s insincerities.

Elvira and other mystic happenings are brilliantly supported by Magic Consultant Adam Mada as, by the end, David Fleischer’s fine drawing room is almost ripped apart. And Fleischer’s vivid costuming gives an ideal cast perfect expression. It’s a must-see melodrama.

Martin Portus The People’s Dance Party Bring a Plate Dance Company. New Benner Theatre, Metro Arts, Brisbane. Apr 2.

IMMERSIVE theatre could not get more smile-inducing than The People’s Dance Party by Bring a Plate inclusive dance company. Their show is just over an hour of pure fun for all ages.

The format is straightforward: six dance artists demonstrate their individual styles from different cultures and eras in a showcase performance, and then invite the crowd to join them in copying and showing off their moves. This is a great way to expose an audience to dance culture - from Indigenous Islander traditions to urban street moves to the drama of drag. It’s such a fun way to learn about different cultures and inclusion, it should be on the school curriculum.

The artists on show at this Dance Party were amazing: traditional Polynesian dance from Lelani Tahiata; a Filipino dance by Sugar, featuring balancing drinking glasses; a body popping routine by Denzal Van Uitregt; Therese (and her Dad!) from the Kanasuc Sega Dancers displaying the traditional dance of Mauritius; the African-influenced beats of Yasim Coronado Veranes; and the gorgeous and vivacious Miss Martoya thriving in a high-powered pop and Diva dance routine in red sequins and high-heel boots.

This really is inclusive and accessible dance - the encore was a Conga line, with the whole audience joining the performers in a final celebration of dance.

Beth Keehn Stay Woke

By Aran Thangaratnam. Directed by Bridget Balodis. A Malthouse Theatre production at Darlinghurst Theatre, Sydney. Mar 26 - Apr 17.

HAS there ever been a better stage setting at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Theatre? Matilda Woodroofe’s wonderfully realised Scandinavian wood cabin is terrific, with many acting areas and a glass back wall against which the snow has piled.

Author Aran Thangaratnam is Sri Lankan born and so are the fraternal lead roles in his bright 4-hander. Niv and Sai, played with authenticity and gusto by Dushan Philips

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Stage Whispers 69

Empire Theatre’s We Will Rock You. Photo: Lucy RC Photography.

70 Stage Whispers

Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

and Kaivu Suvarna, have little in common. Niv, 30, is proudly vegan and a culture warrior, ready to call people to account for their actions. Meanwhile his ‘golden boy’ younger brother Sai, 25, is an action man, smart in his leather jacket.

Their partners for this weekend adventure are the perfect opposites. Mae (Brooke Lee) is non-binary, and enjoys the tangles that ensue, while Kate (Rose Adams) is white, from the country, and ready to put her foot right into everything.

The weekend goes by in a blur of sibling rivalry and misplaced political correctness. Kate is repeatedly blundering into situations that she can’t deal with. Mae watches the men battle for supremacy with laidback slyness.

Kate has brought a supply of Xanax, Mae overdoses, the men are brought to a sudden stop. Directed to the hilt by Bridget Balodis, this is David Williamson for the Woke Generation.

Frank Hatherley

now...well, now they are having relationship difficulties.

And we, the audience, are a part of their group therapy.

This beautiful production from Lost Dog retells the well-worn story of star-crossed lovers through monologue, conversation, and dance. Conceived and directed by Ben Duke, it’s an intelligent exploration of love, loss - and love lost.

Solène Weinachter is Juliet, her passionate character enriched by her French accent. Weinachter also devised the performance with director Duke, and is brilliant in her storytelling, both when relating her memories and correcting those of her husband, Romeo.

Kip Johnson is a very different Romeo, with English confusion and apology, yet the dramatic awkwardness dissolves to flowing dance when the music starts. The lovers’ movement is elegant and graceful, then violent and disharmonious, constantly and perfectly breathless. It is tremendous visual art and emotional storytelling.

Together, Weinachter and Johnson can have so much chemistry and synchronicity that you begin to question where the relationship isn’t working. But then suddenly We Will Rock You there’s the fire, there’s the conflict. What this story does Music and lyrics by Queen, story and script by Ben Elton. so well is to show us how things crumble when the Empire Theatre Toowoomba. Mar 18 - 26 foundation isn’t truth; how unspoken thoughts can CELEBRATING the Queen musical’s 20th anniversary, sharpen over time, to become a lethal knife.

The incorporation of Shakespeare’s story is cleverly the creative team behind the production of We Will Rock turned inside out, his words misappropriated to tell You at the Empire Theatre have a sure-fire hit on their hands! The opening night received a standing ovation for different stories. Then there’s a different kind of light to the faces of the quarrelling couple, though there is strong the non-stop stream of classic hits from Queen’s goldstandard jukebox. The musical direction by Craig Renshaw illumination in every moment of their performances, was first rate, and the rocking live band added a palpable which are beautiful, laugh out loud funny, crushing, crashing, and tragic. energy, including Dale Robbins and Mark Chalmers channelling the all-important Brian May tone on guitars.

Mark Wickett Ben Elton’s script does not require much character You’re All Invited to My Son Samuel’s Fourth Birthday development, but it does demand constant energy, and confident rock singing chops! The leads were Party outstanding: Bryn Jenke as Galileo had the right touch of Adelaide Fringe. Paper Mouth Theatre. Breakout at the rock charisma and energy, matched to the tee by Kate Mill. Mar 15 - 20.

Hudson-James as a streetwise Scaramouche. Hamming it AS the audience is still taking its seats, anxious and doting parents (Mary Angley and Yoz Mensch) are manic up to the hilt were Georgia Spark as Killer Queen and Justin Tamblyn as Commander Khashoggi. The supporting in the detail of their preparations for their son’s fourth cast were equally strong, with special mention to Tristan birthday. It all begins real enough: with a hilarious James as Buddy for his effortless comic timing and crowd- explanation of what makes a ‘hot dad’ by a seductive pleasing local in-jokes. The cast includes more than 25 Angley, sensual poetry on ketchup, and a raw example of couples’ intimacy in their bathroom etiquette. local talents as Bohemian back-up singers and dancers.

With futuristic sets and stunning projections by Craig Quickfire realities soon project to a multimedia Wilkinson, brilliant lighting design by Ben Hunt, great experience that swings like a whacked piñata from surreal to starkly now. The brilliant coupling of Angley and sound design by Steve Alexander, nifty retro-chic costumes by Debra Nairnpower and power-packed duo Mensch sprinkle guilty contradictions of compostable Wayne Scott Kermond and Katie Kermond directing and plates and plastic tinsel onto buttered, white, middle-class bread, hyping the angst of climate change to Mad Max choreographing, this production ticked all the boxes!

Beth Keehn and a particular South African billionaire.

Part of the genius in Angley’s words is their sharp wit and intelligence; the other part is making it seem normal, Juliet & Romeo Adelaide Festival. Lost Dog. Scott Theatre. Mar 5 - 12. relating the unlikeliest meetings to a future reality that feels just a couple of steps away from now. Combining IT is 20 years since the familiar events involving this couple - except neither Juliet nor Romeo died. Instead, comedy in many forms - visual, verbal, physical and they ran away to Paris, got married, had a daughter, and Longer versions of many reviews can now be found at stagewhispers.com.au

Stage Whispers 71

satirical - we’re still laughing when we realise the responsibility of that future is ours.

The performers are both anarchic and touching (sometimes simultaneously), and the design is dazzling: all sparkly set, bold lighting, and aural excess (the latter from Dan Thorpe). It’s catastrophe comedy that leaves you breathless, thoughtful, and craving fairy bread.

Mark Wickett

More musically and dramatically satisfying, the second act numbered stirring ensemble anthem “Change it” at the top of its highlights.

Marina Prior shone in the song “One of the Boys”; the song’s lyrics “my time to shine” suited her talent and status as a musical theatre diva. The quiet dignity of the blooming relationship between Prior’s Violet and much younger male colleague Joe (Ethan Jones) was also very satisfying.

However, Casey Donovan’s solo “Get Out and Stay 9 To 5 The Musical Music by Dolly Patron. Lyrics and book by Patricia Resnick. Out” was the showstopper, earning a standing ovation Based on the 20th Century Fox Picture. John Frost for from the opening night crowd.

Crossroads Live. Capitol Theatre, Sydney. Opening Night: Our narrator Dolly was back to organise a sing-along Feb 24. at the end of the musical - no guessing what popular DOLLY Parton is not only super talented, but amongst tune she picked - and to urge the audience to tell their the most business savvy artists around, and she provided friends to buy a ticket. the first surprise of the night by beaming in like a Fairy David Spicer Godmother as the narrator, surrounded by the solid gold glitter of the set. Breaking of the fourth wall this way Demagogue steered the musical into the genre of an adult pantomime Adelaide Fringe Festival. Safari Street Creative. The Studio as opposed to a grittier look at injustices in the workplace. at Holden Street Theatres. Feb 25 - 27.

There were the goodies - our three downtrodden SAFARI Street Creative is a two year old South Australia female employees Violet Newstead (Marina Prior), Judy -based independent theatre company focused on local Bernley (Casey Donovan) and Doralee Rhodes (Erin Clare) - writing, innovation and challenge. This piece is the very forced to endure the baddie boss Franklin Hart Jnr, played embodiment of the definition of demagogue. Redefining cheekily and credibly by Eddie Perfect, telling sexist jokes a parent as a political leader, we see the blatant and chasing skirt around the office. manipulation of messages, desires and prejudices played Providing comic relief, Caroline O’Connor portrayed out in a 1:1 verbal battle fought by two narcissistic, nosey informant secretary Roz Keith with wit and panache powerful, yet deeply flawed parents who have been The narrative was left hanging at the end of the first summoned to deal with what seems, at first, to be a act (both literally and metaphorically) when the trio gave trifling misdemeanor by their daughter. Rational thinking their boss the treatment many might say he deserved. ‘goes out of the window’ and is replaced by dizzyingly

Online extras!

Join the cast of 9 To 5 The Musical with their rendition of “Change It”. youtu.be/U_fuqTw72AM 72 Stage Whispers

9 To 5 The Musical.

Photo: David Hooley.

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fast barbs aimed at wounding to win as two actors armed with mobile phones and acid wit explore their loveless marriage of convenience, the Australian political scene, ‘selling’ revolution to the masses and the accidental parenthood that binds them whilst also defining their human and parenting inadequacies.

The 60 minute script is a hero of this show, well grounded as an Australian piece. We meet combatants, Chris and Kate, parents of Michaela, a couple locked in a game of control where each punishes the other with caustic comments and Machiavellian-styled ‘truths’ aimed at making them the victor in each exchange.

Spencer Scholz as Chris and Samantha Riley as Kate are a tour de force. Scholz has a mellifluous voice with beautiful timbre portraying the frustrated, not entirely fulfilled or successful politician with energy and vocal passion. By contrast, Riley brings an icy stillness to much of the role. She vacillates between cold and unmoved to starkly vulnerable with impressive ease.

Media, morals, political ethics, mass manipulation, and parenting are all woven into this tightly scripted, beautifully written and acted piece of first class theatre.

Jude Hines Nearer The Gods

By David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre. Mar 4 - Apr 23.

DAVID Williamson here turns away from his usual focus on Australia’s contemporary middle class ways and instead looks skywards at Isaac Newton’s theory of celestial mechanics, circa 1684.

Nearer the Gods introduces a love-deprived Newton, an eccentric genius teetering on the far edge of the spectrum, hounded by his young colleague Edmund Halley (he of the comet) to complete and publish his revolutionary laws of universal gravitation. Williamson typically delights in the suggestion that Newton was most motivated to outdo his arch-enemy Robert Hooke at the Royal Society.

Janine Watson’s production sets all this in some modern dress world which conjures little imagination or magic. On Hugh O’Connor’s mostly naked stage, the cast leap through many short expositional scenes and, without much truth of place or verisimilitude, tend to wander into mugging and pantomime.

But for sure, there are some good laughs from Gareth Davies as the asocial genius and Sean O’Shea as the pompous Charles II. Rowan Davie is enthusiastic as the atheist Halley and Violette Ayad appealing as his Godloving wife, but their tenderness doesn’t always ring true.

Claudia Ware understudies in the under-realised role of the embittered Robert Hooke (think for better of Salieri and Mozart!).

Williamson runs an entertaining story of jealousies and bad behaviour, but it’s a thin linear play, with little exploration of the scientific debate now or then, and how it may be echoed in the lives of these characters, for whom we care little.

Martin Portus

PERFORMING ARTS MAGAZINE MAY - JUNE 2022. VOLUME 31, NUMBER 2 ABN 71 129 358 710 ISSN 1321 5965

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LIMITED BACK COPIES AVAILABLE. ADVERTISERS We accept no responsibility for material submitted that does not comply with the Trade Practices Act. CAST & CREW Editor: Neil Litchfield 0438 938 064 Sub-editor: David Spicer Advertising: Angela Thompson 03 9758 4522 Layout, design & production: Phillip Tyson 0414 781 008 Contributors: Cathy Bannister, Anne Blythe-Cooper, Mel Bobbermien, Michael Brindley, Rose Cooper, Kerry Cooper, Ken Cotterill, Bill Davies, Coral Drouyn, Jenny Fewster, Peter Gotting, Frank Hatherley, Jude Hines, John P. Harvey, Barry Hill, Tony Knight, Neil Litchfield, Ken Longworth, Kitty Goodall, Rachel McGrath-Kerr, Roger McKenzie, Peter Novakovich, Peter Pinne, Martin Portus, Sally Putnam, Suzanne Sandow, Kimberley Shaw, David Spicer, Carol Wimmer, Mark Wickett, Beth Keehn, Geoffrey Williams and Debora Krizak.

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Stage Whispers 73

Musical Spice

My Opera Australia Debut What is it like to be in a grand production at the Sydney Opera House? The large chorus joined next, and their David Spicer reports on the drama and excitement behind the scenes. thunderous dulcet tones swirled Walking through the stage door of the Sydney Opera House, I was issued with a photo pass which stated David Spicer, Opera Australia Performer.

How cool was that? It felt a bit like being presented with a Baggy Green cap at the beginning of a Test career, except that sadly I had to relinquish it after my short stint as a non-singing actor was over.

Over six weeks I experienced exhilaration from the stage experience, had many close shaves with COVID-19 and also felt great sadness acting out a death march, in a scene which resembled the fate of five of my great grandparents.

The opera was La Juive, a grand French opera not performed in Australia for over a century.

La Juive (The Jewess) has sumptuous music, but the story is a little dusty. At our first rehearsal the revival director Constantine Costa gave the ten actors in the cast a summary of the plot. He rolled his eyes at the more implausible stretches of the work, which is about the forbidden love between a Christian and Jewess.

Originally set in the Middle Ages in 74 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

Switzerland, this production shifted the story to 1930s France.

Even though we were extra actors, sometimes known in the trade as supernumeraries, Con encouraged us to invent a back story for our ‘characters’. When I was portraying an antisemitic Christian militia member, I chose the persona of a senior intelligence officer, keeping an eye on my colleagues. In my alternative role as a Jew, I suggested that my character be a complainer.

At the rehearsal we were asked to march around in grids, keeping a distance from each other and slowing or speeding up as he commanded, from number 1 to 10.

The next rehearsal saw the principals turn up and, being from an amateur theatre background, I was immediately impressed that they knew all their (French) lines perfectly. We were brought in three weeks before opening night, so they had a head start.

Sometimes we were excused early from a rehearsal, which made me feel awkward when a big star was singing, as I wanted to stay listen and applaud.

around us.

The set and costumes were imported from a production in France.

Darned into my coat were the names of the French actors who were wore it before.

We cursed the set’s steep stairs at the front of the stage, but enjoyed the ride on the slow moving tracks downstage.

Bits of forest, or a bookcase or a tower were wheeled around and rotated in pieces on trucks by a team of no less than 15 stage crew hands.

I was told that the Opera Theatre requires a large crew because the side stage is one of smallest around for a company of this scale, and the set has to be bumped out after every performance to make way for other operas. It is so squeezy that the tops of the trees were tickling the innards of the Opera House’s iconic shells, a bit like those rapid antigen tests up your nostril, which we were required to poke before every rehearsal or performance.

To get an early look at the set I put my hand up for an extra shift.

They needed ‘light walkers’ to stand on the stairs whilst the lighting

designer and director tweaked the lamps.

As this was my debut on the stage of the Dame Joan Sutherland Theatre I sang several arias - albeit very quietly under my breath to avoid aggravating the production team.

Backstage is a bit of rabbit warren of corridors and stairs up and down to the theatre surrounding the Green Room - which took time to get the hang of.

The chorus and actors share common dressing rooms, whilst the stars have their own private rooms with windows out to Sydney Harbour.

Generally, the chorus and principals were friendly to the nonsinging actors. Some of the stars who were aloof at first, ended up sharing practical jokes with us by the end of the season.

Some of the leading lights arrive at the Opera House dressed modestly.

Patrons walk up in their finery not knowing that the person walking alongside them in stubbies and T-shirt is a superstar.

Overall, the organisation from Opera Australia was impeccable.

From the dulcet tones of the stage (Continued on page 76)

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La Juive is a haunting look at love and persecution. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/C7ix1lUV08A stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 75

David Spicer and Diego Torre.

Musical Spice

(Continued from page 75)

manager reminding everyone exactly when they were due on stage, to our names being darned into every piece of costume including socks (washed after every performance), to backstage crew guiding us off stage when the light was in our face, it felt that no box was left unticked.

I was assigned various roles. My first appearance on stage was in a black shirt as part of a French militia.

We had to control the crowd and hand out bribes on behalf of our antisemitic leader. Then I had a quick change to become a Jew who was forced up a tower to watch in horror at a book burning demonstration.

Then I was dragged down and beaten up alongside two others.

Next was my favourite scene as part of a Passover seder - which is ceremonial meal to mark the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Being so close to the lead tenor Diego Torre as he projected his velvet trumpet-like voice was thrilling.

In the second act, I was part of a background scene of prison officials coldly administering, in slow motion, the paperwork of executions.

As opening night approached, I wondered if that was it? Would I appear at the end of the opera, which reaches a grisly conclusion?

The looming holocaust was symbolised in a jarring drop of shoes into the stage.

At the second last rehearsal word came that the actors would be part of a solemn march - to take off our hats and coats, and walk to the back of the 76 Stage Whispers May - June 2022

stage, to step down into a forest, symbolically to our deaths.

The music was grim and to approach this in an appropriate mood I imagined how my five great grandparents would have felt when they were murdered during the Holocaust. To honour them, I visualised their black and white photos and repeated their names.

Being asked to act in this scene at the end of the opera meant we were available to take part in the curtain call.

The ten actors marched on first to soak up the applause. I felt like a bit of an imposter, as it was the singers and musicians who deserved the ovation.

After opening night, the reviews which came out were largely very positive. A slice of my face appeared in one of the pictures on the far right.

Whilst no critics mentioned the actors, our Assistant Director gave us regular notes.

I was told to move a bit less, to go from point A to point B a bit quicker, to not pull focus from the chorus, and not to wave at my friends and family during the bows. (Oops!) Almost all instructions were strictly followed.

Younger relatives dragged along to watch the opera were entertained at the implausible sight of myself on this stage, and, to be truthful, a bit bored, as it was not the ideal opera for someone who has not been before.

As COVID-19 swirled around the cast and community, I was nervous about missing part of the season. The actor who beat me up on stage tested positive, as did several other people who I had been near. I fled the family

home to isolate.

My goal was to do everything I could to be there for the final performance, when my frail and elderly mother was attending.

Recently she had to give up her lifelong subscription to the opera.

Anxiety grew as the final performance approached, when my brother and my mother’s carer tested positive or were close contacts.

This meant I had to pick her up at the nursing home and gather an entourage of helpers to get her to her seat.

In the morning my rapid antigen test was negative. I did a fist pump. I arrived early at my mother’s room, then eased her into a wheelchair and pushed her to my car.

I deposited the entourage at the front gate of the Opera House, where she was given another wheelchair which was pushed onto a buggy that took her under the steps.

It was a wheelchair all the way to her seat - which was in the step-free second row.

Now to focus on one member of the audience is not professional, but given that I was on stage with dozens and this was (probably) my mother’s last trip to the opera, I did steal the odd glance.

At the curtain call she waved to me. Don’t wave, I thought - we were instructed to only wave as the curtain came down.

She waved again. What else could I do? I gave her a modest wave back using only my hand and wrist. She signalled back. I could clearly see her excellent symbol.

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Order your free copy at: davidspicer.com.au david@davidspicer.com (02) 9371 8458 KEEPING THEATRE GOING

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The Centre Stage Event Company in Albury had to postpone twice to navigate COVID-19, then had to navigate rules from two different states, to get its production of We Will Rock You to the stage.

A high school in the COVID-19 free bubble of The Northern Territory miraculously got a production of The Great Australian Rock Musical up at the peak of the crisis.

Chookas to companies resuming disrupted seasons and wishing everyone a safe return to the theatre.

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