Virginia Gay Cracks the Whip as Calamity Jane

Posted on June 6, 2016 by jolitson

Virginia Gay will play Calamity Jane. Photo: Sam Ruttyn

As revealed in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, Virginia Gay is to play Calamity Jane for Neglected Musicals in August

Blown away by Virginia Gay’s portrayal of photographer Liz Imbrie in High Society at the Hayes Theatre Co last year, Michelle Guthrie immediately set about looking for a starring vehicle for the popular performer.

Guthrie, who produces Neglected Musicals, settled on the 1961 musical Calamity Jane, which was adapted from the much-loved 1953 Warner Bros movie written for Doris Day.

“Virginia absolutely stole the show in High Society in my opinion, which is why I wanted to find something where it’s OK for her to steal the show. Calamity is barely off stage. It’s perfect for her. She gets all the big songs and a lot of gags – and her comic timing is impeccable,” says Guthrie.

Neglected Musicals will present Calamity Jane in August as part of the Hayes Theatre Co’s season for the second half of 2016.

Best known for her TV roles in Network Seven’s Winners & Losers and All Saints, Gay (who graduated from the WAAPA acting course) is also a gifted musical theatre performer as she showed with consummate performances in High Society and Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Squabbalogic at the Sydney Opera House last month.

With season five of Winners & Losers shot and ready to screen later this year, Gay is enjoying taking advantage of the hiatus in her TV schedule to flex her musical theatre muscle on short-run productions like Wonderful Town and now Calamity Jane.

Virginia Gay and Bobby Fox in High Society. Photo: Kurt Sneddon

Gay says she watched the film of Calamity Jane “obsessively” as a child. “I had a series of films I watched over and over again, which was kind of like a cheap babysitting for my parents because they would put it on and I wouldn’t move – and Calamity Jane was one of them,” she says.

The whip-cracking, gun-toting, buckskin-clad character is inspired by a real American frontierswoman called Martha Jane Canary, nicknamed Calamity Jane.

Set in Deadwood City, where Calamity can outride and outshoot everyone except Wild Bill Hickok, the show tells a fictional story involving comic confusion, jealousy and love. The terrific score includes famous songs such Windy City, Secret Love, The Black Hills of Dakota and The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away!).

“I used to love it growing up because she’s an independent woman. She’s iconoclastic and transgressive and powerful and funny,” says Gay.

“I like the fact that (wearing men’s clothes) is her way of surviving on the frontier in the Wild West. What an amazing choice. I really love her. It no doubt started a lifelong love of funny outsiders; they are my favourite role in any show.”

Neglected Musicals presents minimally staged readings of rarely seen shows – Calamity Jane has only ever had amateur productions in Australia – performed by a top cast with script in hand after just a day or two’s rehearsal.

“After 10 years of television, I love working quick. One day (to rehearse) is psychotic but that’s great,” says Gay.

“I think the audience feels like they are in on something special. You never normally get to see something like this. It’s like being in the rehearsal room. It’s so intimate and so full of glorious mistakes. It’s like we are all in this together and it’s delightful.”

Calamity Jane plays at the Hayes Theatre Co, August 3 – 6. Bookings: hayestheatre.com.au or 8065 7337

A version of this story ran in the Sunday Telegraph on June 5

The Literati

Posted on June 6, 2016 by jolitson

SBW Stables Theatre, June 1

Gareth Davies as Tristan Tosser and Miranda Tapsell as Juliet. Photo: Daniel Boud

In his latest Molière adaptation, Justin Fleming has one of the characters bemoan the proliferation of over-rated writers:

“They seem to pop up everywhere, as if we somehow breed them; With so many people writing, it’s a wonder there’s anyone to read them. And there are people who cannot write, re-writing authors who could, And giving us appalling version of works that used to be good.”

The swipe at the number of new adaptations of classic plays seen on Sydney stages in recent years (including his, of course) was met with a huge roar of laughter on opening night.

The criticism of “appalling versions” can’t be levelled at Fleming who has cornered a market adapting Molière’s satirical comedies for Australian audiences, writing them in rollicking verse laced with colourful, contemporary slang.

After staging his laugh-out-loud versions of The School for Wives in 2012 and Tartuffe in 2014, Bell Shakespeare has joined forces with Griffin Theatre Company to present the third in a winning trifecta.

The Literati is adapted from Molière’s 1672 play Les Femmes Savantes (The Learned Ladies): a piss-take on literary and intellectual pretention. Fleming has anglicised names, removed a couple of characters – an aunt and uncle whose functions in the drama are given to other characters – and turned the scholar Vadius into a woman, all of which works a treat.

In a nutshell, young lovers Juliet (Miranda Tapsell) and Clinton (Jamie Oxenbould) want to marry. Juliet’s sensible but hen-pecked father Christopher (Oxenbould again) approves of the match. But her mother Philomena (Caroline Brazier) and sister Amanda (Kate Mulvany), both dreadful cultural snobs who host a Tuesday book club, are determined she marry the aptly named Tristan Tosser (Gareth Davies) who they idolise.

In fact, Tosser is a third-rate poet described as “one sausage sanger short of a barbie” who would “bore the arse off a Mallee bull”. Though he’s a complete charlatan with an eye to their fortune, he’s a more foolish, passive villain than the devious Tartuffe and doesn’t feel as much of a real danger. As a result, the play is fairly predictable.

Kate Mulvany as Amanda and Caroline Brazier as Philomena. Photo: Daniel Boud

Nonetheless, it’s a gloriously funny production, directed by Lee Lewis (who also directed The School for Wives), in which the virtuosity of Fleming’s verse writing is matched by brilliant comic performances all round.

Fleming mixes up his rhyme schemes so that as well as frisky rhyming couplets there are a couple of other verse patterns. The changes of gear keep things fresh and varied.

Designer Sophie Fletcher works wonders within the tiny space to evoke a chic, bourgeois Parisian home with designer furniture. An eclectic mix of art on the walls speaks of someone buying work deemed collectable rather than a reflection of personal taste and passion. At the centre of the stage is a raised revolve, which Lewis uses very cleverly to keep the action moving without overdoing it.

Dramatic Baroque-flavoured music, co-composed by Max Lambert and Roger Lock, punctuates the drama with humour while quick-smart doubling from the cast of five adds another level of fun, with all the actors except Davies playing two characters. Brazier is a commanding presence, moving with skilful ease between the domineering, pashmina-draped Philomena and the wise scholar Vadius in black jacket. While Vadius maintains her elegant poise, Philomena becomes increasingly dishevelled as the play unfolds.

Mulvany is hysterically funny as the uptight, fierce, wilfully deluded Amanda who once rejected Clinton but now won’t accept that he could have transferred his affections to Juliet. The way she edges sideways onto the raised revolve in her tight skirt and high heels is a hoot in itself. And where Brazier’s hair slowly becomes messier and more unkempt, Mulvany’s entire body is upended at one point by the comical goings-on. She also plays an officious attorney in tightly belted raincoat.

Jamie Oxenbould as Christopher. Photo: Daniel Boud

With just a baseball cap to differentiate them, Oxenbould flips convincingly between Clinton and Christopher, bringing the house down in one hilarious scene in which he plays them both.

Tapsell glows as the guileless Juliet and the bolshie maid Martina, sacked by Philomena for her bogan-phraseology (“the woman’s a walking earache”) and crimes against language. In an interview, Tapsell told me that she uses her native Darwin accent for Martina (which she worked very hard to lose while at NIDA).

As Tosser – or Tossère as he would have it – Davies, in artfully draped scarf and jewellery, poses and speaks with a quiet, affected languor.

Running 160 minutes including interval, The Literati makes its point about intellectual pomposity versus true wisdom, while its discussion about marriage and women’s role in society still strikes a strong chord, but mostly it’s heaps of silly fun. Recommended.

The Literati runs at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross until July 16. Bookings: www.griffin.com.au or 02 9361 3817

A version of this review ran in the Sunday Telegraph on June 5

Robyn Nevin – from All My Sons to My Fair Lady

Posted on May 30, 2016 by jolitson

2016 STC ALL MY SONS Robyn Nevin and John Howard by James Green 3992

Robyn Nevin co-stars with John Howard in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons for Sydney Theatre Company. Photo: James Green

From one of the great tragedies of 20^th century theatre to one of the most perfect musicals ever written, Robyn Nevin will be running the emotional gamut in her next two productions.

A grande dame of Australian theatre, Nevin is currently at Sydney Theatre Company rehearsing Arthur Miller’s powerful classic All My Sons, which begins previewing on Saturday.

She then moves straight onto My Fair Lady, directed by Julie Andrews for Opera Australia and John Frost – which will doubtless be a tonic after the emotional toll of All My Sons.

“The play is a beautifully constructed tragedy, the playing out of which leaves us as actors pretty shattered,” admits Nevin.

“But there is also inspiration and deep satisfaction. Giving the work of a great writer to a different audience at each performance, and giving everything, is what sustains me.”

All My Sons is set in 1946 in the backyard of the Keller family. They appear to be a fine example of the American dream. Patriarch Joe Keller is a successful manufacturer, while his wife Kate keeps house. But there is something rotten at the heart of the family.

Kate clings to the hope that their son Larry, missing in action for three years, will return home. When their other son Chris arrives saying he wants to marry Larry’s girlfriend Ann Deever, a tragic series of revelations and events is set in motion.

“The play is basically about denial and secrets and how that corrodes individuals and families,” says Nevin who plays Kate to John Howard’s Joe.

“(Miller) wrote it as a 30-year old man and it was only his second play. They are clearly themes he felt very deeply about and it must have been very raw at the time, after the Second World War – but you know we’re always at war, it seems, and we are always losing soldiers and losing loved ones. Australia has been amazingly fortunate that we haven’t been at war on (home) land and we haven’t had a civil war but still (war) has taken its toll,” says Nevin.

“There’s so much more emphasis now on returned soldiers and the devastation that’s caused (in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder) to all who serve. That’s only just touched on in the play because it wasn’t examined in those days. But it is a presence in the play because one son has come back from the war and is embittered about his own country because of the fact that – as happened after the Vietnam War – the soldiers who returned were almost ignored as if nothing had changed in the world that they came back to. People didn’t understand the level of their devastation at all.”

Nevin describes Miller’s writing as “so strong, very simple and beautifully structured with wonderful rhythms. They are so authentic. You feel very supported by the structure of the play and the storytelling and the power of the plot. The characters are so beautifully written and so distinct from each other. It’s terrific to do a play like that because you can kind of sink into it. It stretches you and it forces you to work to your fullest, to exercise the muscle, but it’s also very supportive.”

The production is directed by Kip Williams, who directed Nevin in last year’s production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer, staged with a huge video screen showing both live and pre-recorded footage.

“Kip and I had an odd time on Suddenly Last Summer because he was really directing for cameras so I feel this is like a new experience. I don’t feel that we worked so closely before. He’s the politest, sweetest man,” she says.

The chance to perform opposite John Howard was a big drawcard. “I haven’t worked with John for such a long time,” says Nevin. “He’s terrific: such a powerful presence on stage. It’s fabulous. The last time he worked here (at STC) was when I directed him in (Tony McNamara’s 2000 play) The Recruit. I also directed him in The Philadelphia Story (in 1986). I’ve known John since he first got out of NIDA and it’s great to have him back at Sydney Theatre Company.”

Nevin says that these days she has to be “much more wary than in earlier decades” when tackling such emotionally devastating material.

“I used to automatically plunge in. Now I’m much more careful about myself. I still have to plunge in. I have to go there. I have to feel what the character feels and imagine what the character is going through. I do that to the nth degree and that does take its toll. That means I have to be even more careful about myself and my mental, emotional and physical health,” she says.

When she’s not working, Nevin and her partner actor/writer Nicholas Hammond (who played Friedrich in the film of The Sound of Music) spend time in the Southern Highlands, south of Sydney.

“My life is very simple. I go out very rarely. We go to the country and that is an oasis of peace and calm and nature. We’ve got sheep. It’s very restorative,” she says.

In My Fair Lady, Nevin will play Mrs Higgins, society mother of Professor Henry Higgins – a prospect that clearly excites her enormously.

“I think it’s going to be wonderful,” she says citing the “beauty, scale and richness of the music and those wonderful lyrics that make you weep with joy, they are so witty.

“I always wanted to be able to sing so to be inside that musical beauty will be very thrilling, actually,” she says. “My character doesn’t come on for ages until the Ascot scene so I’ll be able to hear them singing when I’m in the dressing room. Imagine that thrill. I’ll be like a groupie!”

Nevin is also excited about working with Julie Andrews and says they have had “a lively conversation” about the musical.

“I’ve met her before with Nicholas but not in a way that enabled a one-on-one conversation. We talked about the piece, we talked about Shaw (on whose play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady is based) because I have directed Shaw. We talked about the musicality of it and the issues. She’s completely charming, of course,” says Nevin.

In celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the original Broadway production, as well as OA’s 60^th birthday, Andrews is recreating the 1956 production in which she co-starred opposite Rex Harrison, playing cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle – the role that catapulted her to international stardom.

Oliver Smith’s set design and Cecil Beaton’s costumes will be recreated, with new choreography from Tony Award-winner Christopher Gattelli.

“I think she’s got an excellent team lined up and the designs and costumes are just extraordinary. I don’t agree with some commentary I read the other day about it being an old-fashioned museum piece and why would you want to resurrect that old production?” says Nevin.

“Well, it’s because it’s exquisite and true to itself. It has its own integrity and a lot of people will appreciate that. I think it will be a winner.”

All My Sons, Roslyn Packer Theatre until July 9. Bookings: 02 9250 1777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au. My Fair Lady, Sydney Opera House, August 30 – November 5. Bookings: 02 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com

A version of this story ran in the Sunday Telegraph on May 29

Bad Jews

Posted on May 25, 2016 by jolitson

Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, May 19

Maria Angelico, Simon Corfield and Anna Burgess. Photo: supplied

At the start of Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, I thought it was going to be a big, broad, lightweight comedy in a sitcom vein, but it quickly turns ferocious, hooking you with its explosive passion and savage humour, underpinned by serious insights.

The viciously funny four-hander is set in a small but fabulously located apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which Jonah’s wealthy parents bought for him and his brother Liam.

Their cousin Diana – who now prefers to go by her Hebrew name of Daphna – is crashing on the floor, having attended the funeral of their beloved grandfather Poppy, a Holocaust survivor, the day before with Jonah.

Daphna is needling Jonah about all sorts – how wealthy his family is, whether he’ll visit her at college and, most importantly, whether she can have Poppy’s Chai, a gold talisman he kept safe during his two years in a concentration camp by hiding it under his tongue. As the most devout and only truly observant Jew among the three cousins, Daphna believes Poppy would want the Chai to go to her.

Then Liam arrives with his pretty but slightly vacuous gentile girlfriend Melody, having missed the funeral because he lost his iPhone while the two of them were skiing at Aspen. Liam, it quickly becomes clear, wants the Chai for himself for rather different reasons and has no intention of letting it go to Daphna.

The play pits the aggressive “uber Jew” Daphna against the secular, self-styled “bad Jew” Liam, with the non-combative Jonah looking on anxiously from the sidelines, keen to stay out of it, while Melody tries to keep the peace. Eventually the verbal stoush escalates into fisticuffs.

Amid the jaw-dropping hilarity, Harmon raises serious questions about Jewish identity and faith in today’s world as well as loss, grief and family.

Written in 2012, Bad Jews has had successful seasons on Broadway and in the West End. This production from Aleksandar Vass and Vass Theatre Group was a sell-out hit in Melbourne last year and now arrives in Sydney with the same terrific cast.

Matt Whitty, Simon Corfield, Maria Angelico and Anna Burgess. Photo: supplied

Staged on a detailed, naturalistic set by Jacob Battista, Gary Abrahams directs at a pace to match the play’s relentless, rampaging energy. Though the four characters are pretty stereotypical, the actors give exceptional performances with Maria Angelico as Daphna and Anna Burgess as Melody shining particularly brightly.

Angelico is a force of nature as Daphna, her bulldozing personality as outsized and uncontrollable as her mane of frizzy hair. Abrasive, bossy, exhaustingly verbose, sanctimonious and manipulative, using information gleaned from Melody to score points against Liam, she’s the kind of person many of us would avoid like the plague.

Angelico plays her to the hilt yet keeps her believable and against all the odds even manages to keep her vaguely likeable. Appalling though she is, you can’t help but admire the way she stands her ground so unapologetically, while the vulnerability she reveals at the end is subtly done.

Burgess also pitches her performance as the daffy but good-hearted Melody beautifully. The scene in which she tries to pour oil on troubled waters by singing Summertime from Porgy and Bess, drawing on everything she’s ever learned about vocal technique in opera classes is excruciatingly, hysterically funny and brilliantly observed. A little masterclass in itself.

Simon Corfield’s rather self-important, uptight Liam and Matt Whitty’s cringing, awkward Jonah are also finely judged. The Everest Theatre isn’t the ideal venue for a play that would be even more explosive in an intimate space but this is such a terrific production that it fires anyway.

Jewish audiences will doubtless find huge amounts to relate to, relish and ponder in Bad Jews but you don’t have to be Jewish to find it a thoroughly enjoyable, provocative evening. Recommended.

Bad Jews plays at the Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre until June 4. Bookings: www.seymourcentre.com or 02 9351 7940

Xanadu The Musical

Posted on May 24, 2016 by jolitson

Hayes Theatre Co, May 17

Jaime Hadwen and Ainsley Melham in XANADU (c) Frank Farrugia

Jaime Hadwen and Ainsley Melham as Kira and Sonny. Photo: Frank Farrugia

The 1980 film Xanadu starring a roller-skating Olivia Newton-John was a famous flop, so outrageously bad that it became a cult classic.

Gleefully spoofing the movie, Xanadu the Musical proved to be a ditzy delight when it premiered on Broadway in 2007. Unfortunately, this heavy-handed production directed and choreographed by Nathan M. Wright for Matthew Management in association with the Hayes Theatre Co steamrollers the heart and much of the comedy out of the sweetly silly show.

Set in 1980, Sonny is a depressed, creatively blocked street artist with more muscles than brain. Clio, a beautiful Greek muse and daughter of Zeus, descends from Mount Olympus to Venice Beach to save him. Donning leg-warmers, roller skates and an Australian accent, she calls herself Kira and inspires him to reach for the stars – or at least open a roller disco.

Meanwhile, two of Clio’s jealous sisters try to trick her, hoping she will incur Zeus’s wrath by falling in (forbidden) love with a mortal.

Writer Douglas Carter Beane has laced his wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, knowing script with jokes about 1980s culture and musicals. At one point, for example, Zeus observes that 1980 will be a cultural turning point: “Creativity shall remain stymied for decades. The theatre? They’ll just take some stinkeroo movie or some songwriter’s catalogue, throw it onstage and call it a show.”

The score, featuring music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne from ELO and John Farrar, is just as much fun, full as it is of chart-topping hits such as Magic, Evil Woman, All Over the World, Suddenly and Xanadu.

Designers Nathan Weyers (set), James Browne (costumes) and Simon Johnson (lighting) have created just the right kind of camp, cheesy 80s look for the show with lashings of colour, glitz and humour from hilarious sirens sporting sparkly mermaid tails, who glide onto stage on wheelie boards, to a cute bicycle Pegasus.

Dion Bilios, James Maxfield, Jaime Hadwen, Ainsley Melham, Catty Hamilton, Kat Hoyos in XANADU (c) Frank Farrugia

Dion Biolos, James Maxfield, Jaime Hadwen, Ainsley Melham, Catty Hamilton and Kat Hoyos. Photo: Frank Farrugia

Wright’s lively, 80s-inspired choreography is also amusing, particularly the sequinned formations on skates at the end. His direction, however, lacks a lightness of touch. Everything is hammered out at the same relentless pace and volume, with the scenery-chewing cast dialling their performances up to 11. Some of the one-liners are thrown away, lost in motor-mouthed shouting. At other times, the humour is laboured. Either way, much of the comedy falls flat. The sound doesn’t help, with the volume on Andrew Bevis’s four-piece band cranked high.

As Kira and Sonny, Jaime Hadwen and Ainsley Melham both sing well but there’s little chemistry between them. In his first musical since leaving Hi-5, Melham’s comic timing is awry. Mugging in cartoony fashion, his blunt reading of the role diminishes the character’s goofy charm. Hadwen has a sweet presence though her strident Aussie accent dominates her portrayal.

The biggest laughs of the night come from Francine Cain and Jayde Westaby, both wonderful as Kira’s scheming sisters Calliope and and Melpomene.

Pitched right, Xanadu can be ridiculously funny. This production (which runs 90 minutes without interval) has its moments and sections of the audience clearly loved it, but I felt it pushes too hard and as a result never quite gets its skates on.

Xanadu the Musical plays at Hayes Theatre Co, Potts Point until June 12. Bookings: hayestheatre.com.au or Ticketmaster 1300 723 038

A version of this review ran online for Daily Telegraph Arts

The Gentleman Magician

Posted on May 24, 2016 by jolitson

The Royal Automobile Club of Australia, Sydney, May 20

Bruce Glen, The Gentleman Magician. Photo: supplied

Walking through the front doors of The Royal Automobile Club of Australia, situated in Macquarie Street not far from the Sydney Opera House, it feels as if you are stepping into another era. The faded glamour of the beautiful historical building whisks you back decades as if time has stood still here.

It’s the perfect setting for Bruce Glen’s show The Gentleman Magician, a magical soirée in which he aims to re-create the ambience of a 19^th century European salon. The ticket includes a glass of bubbly and canapés on arrival and then as we settle into seats facing the small raised platform where he will perform, he suddenly appears among us, a welcoming, genial presence.

The Gentleman Magician has none of the razzle-dazzle and flashy stage-craft of shows like The Illusionists recently seen in Sydney. Instead it’s an intimate evening for an audience of around 70 in which Glen – who is a member of The Magic Circle – combines consummate story-telling with magic tricks. An ambient soundtrack plays quietly in the background to create a slightly mysterious atmosphere, while an assistant unobtrusively sets up various acts.

Glen has researched the area and tells tales of local showmen from times past, as well as international stars like Houdini, not to mention the ghost who apparently haunts the building. He has given each of his tricks a name such as All Ropes Are Not Created Equal, Another Con Job, The Imaginary Psychic and Wonderland – the latter, a card trick performed with a member of the audience in which he draws on Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.

Presenting himself as a professional “liar” and avowed skeptic, he performs mind-reading illusions, using the trickery that charlatans have employed to pose as psychics. In one of his signature pieces, Percy Pitch, he brings his own twist to the “one cup and one ball” trick by performing it while narrating a poem that he wrote in the style of Banjo Patterson.

I reckon I could see how a couple of tricks were done but most were satisfyingly baffling. All in all, it’s a thoroughly entertaining evening (running around 70 minutes) performed by the genteel Glen with stylish, old-fashioned charm.

Bruce Glen performs The Gentleman Magician at The Royal Automobile Club of Australia, 89 Macquarie Street, Sydney every Friday night. Bookings are essential: www.gentlemanmagician.com.au or 1300 033 599

Alex Jennings Steps Back into Professor Higgins’ Tweeds

Posted on May 23, 2016 by jolitson

Alex Jennings. Photo: supplied

There is nothing like a Dame as British actor Alex Jennings knows, having performed opposite some of acting’s greatest. He co-starred with Maggie Smith in the recent film The Lady in the Van and in 2006 played Prince Charles to Helen Mirren’s monarch in The Queen.

Still, he admits he was nervous when he met Dame Julie Andrews to discuss her 60^th anniversary production of My Fair Lady for Opera Australia/John Frost in which he will play Professor Henry Higgins – a role he first played in the West End in 2002.

“We met in London. I had a very lovely hour with her over drinks and we chatted about the piece and about her experience in it and my experience in it. I was quite nervous and completely delighted by meeting her,” he says.

A classical actor with three Olivier Awards to his name, including one for My Fair Lady, Jennings has worked extensively at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre.

Though born in Essex, he frequently plays “posh” characters. In something of a royal flush, having previously portrayed Prince Charles, he now plays Prince Edward in Netflix’s new drama The Crown and is currently in Yorkshire filming a British television series about Queen Victoria in which he plays Leopold I, King of Belgium, uncle to both Victoria and Albert.

“Where would we be without our royal family?” he quips in his silky, sonorous voice.

Jennings is coming to Sydney in August to co-star in My Fair Lady with rising star Anna O’Byrne as Eliza Doolittle – the cockney flower-seller Higgins bets he can pass off as an aristocrat by teaching her to speak “proper”. The top-drawer Australian cast also includes Reg Livermore, Tony Llewellyn-Jones and Robyn Nevin.

Jennings was at the National working with Trevor Nunn on Vanbrugh’s Restoration comedy The Relapse in 2001 when Nunn asked if he’d like to take over from Jonathan Pryce as Higgins in his production of My Fair Lady, which was transferring to the West End.

“I’d never done a musical before and it was an extraordinary experience. I absolutely loved it,” says Jennings, who played the part for 11 months.

In 2014, he took over the role of Willie Wonka in the West End production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Musical directed by Sam Mendes and again relished the experience. Offered the chance to revisit Higgins in Australia, Jennings leapt at the chance.

“I’m really thrilled because it’s such a great musical and it’s such a great acting role as well as being a musical theatre role. It’s like playing Hamlet in a way, it’s inexhaustible really. So I’m thrilled to be having another go and slightly overwhelmed at the thought of working with Julie,” he says.

“And I’ve never been to Australia before so it’s a big treat,” he adds, saying that his wife, landscape gardener Lesley Moors, will come with him while their two children, now in their 20s, and his “dear, old Dad” will also visit.

Andrews is recreating the 1956 Broadway production in which she starred as Eliza opposite Rex Harrison.

“Even though the framework is going to be the same with the Cecil Beaton and Oliver Smith designs, there’s new choreography (by Tony Award-winner Christopher Gattelli) and I think there’s room for manoeuvring and putting one’s stamp on it,” says Jennings.

“And, listen, they were great designs. I’ve been told that tweed fabrics are being rewoven as we speak. I’m happy to be in Rex Harrison’s old suits.”

Jennings describes the curmudgeonly, misogynistic Higgins as “volatile” but says: “he’s doing something quite radical I think. He wants to turn things on their head and give people lower down the social ladder – specifically Eliza in this case – opportunities to shift in society.

“He wants to mess with the English class system, which is a good thing. He’s passionate, he has borderline behavioural problems, living on his own. His heart and head have never been messed with in the way they are when Eliza comes to the house.”

Now 59, Jennings thinks there will be differences in his portrayal to when he last played the role.

“Since I last did it my singing has grown. When I was doing Willie Wonka I worked with a brilliant singing teacher called Mary King and she has given me confidence and brought on my singing,” he says.

“And I’m older – though I’m not as old as Rex Harrison was when he finished doing it. But there is going to be a bigger age difference between me and Eliza than there was when I last did it so any sense of romance would perhaps be less appropriate.”

My Fair Lady plays at the Sydney Opera House from August 30 – November 5. Bookings: www.sydneyoperahouse.com or 9250 7777

A version of this story appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on May 22

Black Jesus

Posted on May 16, 2016 by jolitson

Kings Cross Theatre, May 11

BLACK JESUS Elijah Williams as Black Jesus IMG_8679- by Nick McKinlay

Elijah Williams as Gabriel Chibamu or Black Jesus. Photo: Nick McKinlay

In presenting the Australian premiere of Black Jesus by UK playwright, bAKEHOUSE Theatre company gives us a glimpse into a world that few of us know about a great deal about and one that is rarely portrayed on our stages.

Black Jesus is set in Zimbabwe in 2015. Robert Mugabe’s government has fallen and a new Truth and Justice Commission has been established to investigate the horrific crimes committed during his regime.

A young woman called Eunice Ncube (Belinda Jombwe-Cotterill) is called up to question a prisoner called Gabriel Chibamu (Elijah Williams) about atrocities he is alleged to have committed as one of the most notorious members of Mugabe’s youth militia, the Green Bombers.

Gabriel is known as the Black Jesus because, as he says: “I decided who would be saved and who would be condemned. I took that responsibility for others and I now I take it for myself. I am Black Jesus. I do not crawl.”

The new Zimbabwe government is keeping an eye on Eunice’s investigation through Endurance Moyo (Dorian Nkono), a smooth-talking political operator who has known her since she was a child. Then there’s Rob Palmer (Jarrod Crellin) a white lawyer working with Eunice and with whom she has had a brief affair. He wants to support her but as soon as the threats start, he is quickly out of there.

Black Jesus evokes a dark world of violence, corruption and buried secrets where nothing is clear cut; everyone shares some form of guilt and is a victim at the same time.

Produced by John Harrison, co-artistic director of bAKEHOUSE Theatre, Suzanne Millar directs a taut, powerful production. With a simple but striking set – an African tree painted on the wall with branches overhead (set design by Millar and Harrison) – Millar uses the slightly awkward space (two banks of seating on either side of a flat stage) extremely well. The use of a drummer (Alex Jalloh) helps build atmosphere and tension.

Millar has assembled an impressive cast. As Eunice, Jombwe-Cotterill looks small and fragile but allies that with a quiet steeliness. She is frequently extremely still, which gives her an understated strength and resonant presence, and meets Gabriel’s ferocious energy with a cool, hard stare. As Gabriel, Williams exudes an intimidating, explosive rage that feels genuinely threatening. Together, the game of cat-and-mouse they play keeps you tense.

Though Eunice’s relationship with Rob is not particularly well developed, Crellin is very convincing in the role, while Nkono conveys the danger lurking just beneath Moyo’s ebullient joviality.

Running an intense 75-minutes, Black Jesus raises questions about societies trying to recover after brutal regimes and sends you home, intrigued to find out more about the complexity of life in Zimbabwe. Well worth a look.

Black Jesus plays at the Kings Cross Theatre, Kings Cross Hotel until May 21. Bookings: www.kingsxtheatre.com

Wonderful Town

Posted on May 10, 2016 by jolitson

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, May 8

Virginia Gay and Georgina Walker who played sisters Ruth and Eileen in Wonderful Town. Photo: supplied

I didn’t see the semi-staged concert version of Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing at the Sydney Opera House in November – the first collaboration between Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre – but I heard good things.

I was, however, lucky enough to catch the second of two performances of Wonderful Town, their second collaboration– and what a complete delight it was.

Wonderful Town is an effervescent, light-hearted musical comedy featuring a joyous, melodic score by Leonard Bernstein. Written in six weeks in 1953 (nine years after Bernstein’s first musical On the Town), it mixes classical, popular and jazz musical styles, including the electric, syncopated Wrong Note Jazz, which foreshadowed West Side Story three years later.

The show had its roots in a series of short stories written by author/journalist Ruth McKenney published in the New Yorker magazine about her experiences and the colourful characters she and her sister Eileen met when they lived in a Greenwich Village basement apartment. These evolved into a book in 1938 called My Sister Eileen, which was made into a film starring Rosalind Russell.

The musical, Wonderful Town, features a well-structured book by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov and neat, witty lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. It opened on Broadway in 1953, also starring Rosalind Russell, and won five Tony Awards including Best Musical. A good, old-fashioned musical comedy, it has such charm that it’s surprising it’s so little known.

Set in the 1930s, it focuses on two sisters who leave a backwater in Ohio for the bright lights and broader horizons of New York. Ruth, who is hoping to become a writer, is smart, strong and protective of her younger sister Eileen yet awkward when it comes to men. Eileen, who has men falling at her feet, dreams of being a performer.

Jason Langley directs with great clarity on a minimal set (a few flats, the odd table and chair). Designer Brendan Hay has added plenty of colour and period style with his costuming including elegant frocks for the ladies and some natty, patterned trousers for the men.

Dean Vince has done a great job with the choreography which ranges from a hilarious Irish jig (complete with a wash of green lighting) to a conga and some snazzy jazz moves.

Virginia Gay is an absolute star as Ruth. She has such a perfect feel for this style of musical comedy, caressing the tunes with lovely, smooth vocals and landing all the humour with immaculate timing . She brings the house down with Ruth’s comic song 100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man, a very funny but pointed number that you can imagine others picking up to perform in cabaret. Acting wise she captures Ruth’s intelligence, independent spirit and sardonic sense of humour as well as her lack of confidence with men

Newcomer Georgina Walker, who recently graduated from WAAPA, has a nice bright soprano and a perky presence as Eileen. Making her professional mainstage debut in Wonderful Town, she shows great promise.

Scott Irwin shows his versatility in several roles including Bob Barker, the assistant editor who falls for Ruth without realising it at first, and their landlord Mr Appopulous, a self-regarding, pompous artist. A fine singer and actor, Irwin is the perfect foil to Gay as the decent Bob and sings numbers such as “It’s Love” and “Quiet Girl” with an effortless charm.

Aside from Gay and Walker, all the cast – which also includes Scott Morris, Dean Vince, Nicholas Starte, Megan Wilding and Beth Daly – play several parts There is one hilarious moment where Irwin walks off stage as one character and comes straight back on as another to the delight of the audience. Conductor Brett Weymark even plays a cameo role as nightclub owner Speedy Valenti from the podium.

The choir, sitting in the choir stalls and boxes on either side of the stage, are all dressed in their own outfits of red, black and white. Langley involves them in the action by having them do some bopping, arm-waving choreography from their seats. He also has a few of them come on stage in crowd scenes which is a bit messy but it does generate a lovely sense of community involvement.

The orchestra plays with exuberant gusto under Weymark, serving up an exciting big band sound, and there are plenty of ear-worms in the score most notably the gorgeous, lilting It’s Love – in fact, half the audience seemed to be singing It’s Love as they left the theatre, big smiles on their faces.

This kind of collaboration between Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Squabbalogic is a great initiative, giving us the opportunity to see a rarely performed musical in a semi-staged production with an orchestra, a large choir and a top cast (performing off book).

Together with Neglected Musicals – who are already doing a great job of presenting small-scale rehearsed readings of rarely seen musicals, performed book in hand at the intimate Hayes Theatre Co – it’s a very welcome addition to Sydney’s musical theatre scene.

Pennsylvania Avenue

Posted on May 10, 2016 by jolitson

The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, April 30

Bernadette Robinson in Pennsylvania Avenue. Photo: supplied

Bernadette Robinson is well known for her uncanny ability to impersonate singers across a range of styles and genres. Keen to extend this beyond cabaret into a theatre show, she approached director Simon Phillips who commissioned Joanna Murray-Smith to write a play to showcase Robinson’s extraordinary gift.

The result was Songs for Nobodies, which premiered in 2010, in which Robinson performed monologues by five “nobodies” each of whom had had an encounter with a famous singer: Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Maria Callas. Naturally, Robinson gave voice to the divas too.

Songs for Nobodies was an inspired and inspiring piece of theatre and proved a huge success. Following up on it, Murray-Smith has written a new piece for Robinson called Pennsylvania Avenue, which is also directed by Phillips. Once again, Robinson leaves you marvelling at her talent but the show itself is not as engaging as its predecessor.

Pennsylvania Avenue, which premiered at Melbourne Theatre Company, is set in the White House. Robinson plays Harper Clements, a girl from the south who gets a big break as an underling at the White House where she works her way up to become a trusted aide responsible for co-ordinating entertainment events. We meet her on her final day. After 40 years of hard work, her services are no longer required and she is packing up and leaving, reminiscing as she goes.

Murray-Smith uses the fictitious Clements as a clever way to interweave historical facts and anecdotal stories about various American presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, along with their First Ladies and the many entertainers who performed for them. (I imagine it would go down a treat in the US). In narrating the piece, Robinson voices umpteen characters, male and female.

It begins with Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday for JFK in 1962 and takes in singers as diverse as Sarah Vaughan, Barbra Streisand, Maria Callas, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, Diana Ross, Peggy Lee, Tammy Wynette and even an amazingly convincing, raspy Bob Dylan singing Eve of Destruction.

Her Sarah Vaughan is arguably the least successful but overall it’s extraordinary the way Robinson conveys such different vocalists, and she had the audience bopping in their seats for Aretha Franklin’s Respect.

Bernadette Robinson. Photo: supplied

Harper is a no-nonsense, resourceful character who is seen dispensing advice to everyone from Marilyn Monroe on knicker lines to Ronald Reagan on his famous Berlin Wall speech. However, her personal story is less interesting and the final revelation doesn’t have the emotional impact it is clearly supposed to.

The set by Shaun Gurton is a plush, upholstered room called The Blue Room with six large framed portrait of early presidents on the wall, which prove to be screens on which historical photographs are shown. Blue drapes at the back occasionally become transparent under the lighting to show the three-piece band sitting behind them. It looks suitably stylish but Robinson rattles around it a bit, shifting from chair to chair, moving her box of things or pouring a drink to keep her busy.

Often it looks as if she is moving for the sake of doing something. Nonetheless, she is a fine actor as well as an exceptional singer and she holds the stage in commanding fashion as she moves with quicksilver ease between numerous characters.

Running 90 minutes without interval, Pennsylvania Avenue feels a touch long but it keeps you entertained and is a lively showcase for a unique performer.

Pennsylvania Avenue plays at the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until May 22. Bookings: www.sydneyoperahouse.com or 02 9250 7777

Jo Litson: Scene and Heard

Articles and reviews about the performing arts in Sydney – and occasionally beyond.