Yesterday, James D Smith was acclaimed as one of Australia's most promising emerging artists.
Today he truly emerges, leaping into a coveted blockbuster role.
Showbiz supremo John Frost, who knows more than a thing or two about investing in top talent, has announced Smith as a new cast elevation in Dirty Dancing for its October opening in Adelaide.
For Adelaide audiences, this is particularly pleasing since they remember Smith very fondly for his Fringe concerts at the Promethean, not to mention headlining with Pete Murray and The Whitlams at the Fringe 2013 closing concert.
He is one those for whom success has been a steady path, assured by diligent honing of the skills in broad and constant showbiz experience. He came from a musical family wherein his father taught him guitar early on. He went on to gain a degree in musical performance from the Ballarat Arts Academy.
He's made all the right moves, working wherever work was to be found, showing his discipline with long stage seasons as in four years playing Boq in the hit musical Wicked as it toured the world. He's sung Carols by Candlelight concerts in front of massive open-air crowds. He has entertained the champagne-sippers on cruise ships. He sung clubs, bars and backing. He's been where the work has been.
He has been touring with Dirty Dancing as Mark Vincent's understudy in the role of Billy Kostecki for some time and now, just as in all the showbiz dream-come-true stories, the understudy door opens and he is granted the prized role.
While Smith's training encompassed operatic singing, he has become known in the pop/indie genre. Very different from that of his predecessor in the role, Smith's voice is of a lovely light tenor character with some very beautiful and unusual resonances. Bert Newton has been quoted describing it as "a magnificent voice which reaches out and touches all emotions" while the Promethean's David Grice swooned: "Quite simply his is the best male voice I have ever heard. I was sitting there not actually believing I was hearing what I was."
Dirty Dancing showcases that special voice with two of the best songs in the show - The Time of My Life and The Still of the Night.
The season commences in Adelaide on October 2 at the Festival Theatre.
Samela Harris
When: 2 Oct to 1 Nov
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Harold Minear has shocked the theatre world with news of his resignation as Publicity Officer of St Jude's Players.
The man is only 87 years old, for heaven's sake. He will be a hard act to follow.
Harold Minear must have been the most senior publicist in the business. He's been at it for 10 years and directing, writing and being on the company committee for 50. He has been an institution not only at St Jude's but in the country's theatre world.
If it were not for medical advice, one imagines he would have gone on producing with the media releases, phone outreach, photo calls and promotional charm.
Of course, he has had an advantage in that slippery world of publicity. He is a singularly popular, nay, beloved thespian - respected in all quarters. He is recipient of an Adelaide Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award among many accolades. Even overworked and evasive media people feel happy, perhaps even honoured, every time they hear from him.
He has been the great jewel in the crown of St Jude's these many long years.
He reveals that a publicity committee will be looking after things in his lieu until the next St Jude's AGM next year.
And he is far from out of the game. As a Life Member of St Jude's, he says he will be involved with the company whenever possible.
Naturally, his last press release is as professional as his first, ensuring that the proper contact information is passed on; phone, email and, of course, St Jude's website: www.stjudesplayers.asn.au
All power and good spirit to a good publicist and thespian role model.
Samela Harris
Indonesian contributions open and close the 2015 OzAsia Festival.
One of Australia’s closest neighbours is gifting us with 20 works involving more than 100 artists over the opening weekend alone, in a festival with 41 events, five world premieres and 15 Australian premieres.
This will be the biggest showcase of arts presented from Indonesia in Australia, giving Australian’s the all-too-rare opportunity to experience “the contemporary side of Indonesia,” said OzAsia Artistic Director Joseph Mitchell.
Highlights include: The Streets, by Teater Garasi, directed by Yudi Ahmad Tadjudin. The Space Theatre will be transformed into a busy Indonesian street where audience members are immersed in the performance occurring around them.
Eko Supriyanto’s Cry Jailolo from North Maluku is a contemporary dance work, which gives expression to the famed underwater world of Jailolo Bay, East Indonesia.
On a more serious note, Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s Mwathirilka delves into Indonesia’s dark days involving the 1965 – 66 anti communist purges, blending puppetry and multimedia.
Indofest, on the closing weekend, has long been associated with OzAsia Festival. The Australian-Indonesian Association of South Australia will gather together a series of traditional dance, games and live music experiences along with traditional food on North Terrace across the Migration Museum, SA Museum, SA Library and Art Gallery of South Australia.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean works, some involving Australian collaboration, offer even broader stylistic cultural experiences very much aimed at contemporary issues, such as Chinese theatre director Meng Jinghui’s première of Amber. This love story charged with multimedia, rock and dance explores not just love, loss and innocence but the disturbing commercialisation of sex in China.
Extremes of consumer society and disposable culture are grist to the mill of Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, a staple of Europe’s contemporary theatre festival scene. The part pop concert, theatre work hybrid makes its Australian premiere for OzAsia Festival.
Spectra, dance collaboration between Japanese and Australian artists was commissioned by OzAsia Festival, involving dancers from Japan and Australia’s Dancenorth. Blending Australian contemporary dance with Japanese butoh collective Batik’s style, Australian choreographer Kyle Page, formerly of Australian Dance Theatre, looks to explore the universal nature of causality; how one thing leads to another.
Finally the Moon Lantern Festival, much beloved by South Australian families, returns on Sunday 27 September, featuring the largest lantern ever created for a Moon Lantern Festival, a 36 person long Hong Kong Dragon.
This Oz Asia Festival truly has something for everyone. The program can be found online at adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/ozasia-festival.
David O’Brien
When: 4 Sept to 4 Oct
Where: Various venues
Bookings: 131 246 or bass.net.au
Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane will make its home on the Arts Theatre stage from the 2nd of July, and Bert will be there to show you around.
It is the well known story of Mary Poppins that arrives on Adelaide’s chilly winter winds, but for the uninitiated it will be nothing like a live production of the 1964 Disney film.
“The show on stage is very different to the movie” says Brendan Cooney, who plays Bert in the Matt Byrne Media production. “There are a lot more characters in there” he says.
“It has a lot more depth to it”.
The amateur rights to the show became available in October last year and this production will be a South Australian premiere. Getting the rights to present the show was “an incredible honour” says Producer/Director Matt Byrne.
“We have a record five-week season to cope with expected demand as the professional production never made it to Adelaide”.
The show features Lauren Potter in the title role of Mary.
“Lauren has spent her childhood following Mary Poppins, so it is basically a dream role for her to have” explains Cooney, “She’s very good at it, and has the character down very well.”
The stage production is more closely based on the original stories by P.L Travers, but includes much of the films award winning music by the Sherman brothers. The stage musicals creator, Cameron Mackintosh, virtually had to beg Travers for the rights to create the show, and was eventually only allowed to do so under very strict conditions.
All of the favourites are in there like Spoonful Of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Let’s Go Fly A Kite, Jolly Holiday, Feed The Birds and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
The big musical number is Step In Time which features Bert, Mary, Jane, Michael and the Sweeps. “We’ve spent a lot of time on that number… and at the moment it feels good” says Cooney.
“Once we get in the theatre we will be able to set it a lot better”
Bert is not the deepest of characters, but he is key to moving the story along. “I’ve been doing a bit of work, really concentrating on it” says Cooney. “Lots of people have said to me. ‘Oh, I watched that lots as a kid’ and I think geez, we better be good!”
For Cooney and Byrne acting is incredibly important in this production, “I’d love to make it more an actor’s role and not just a singer and dancer” says Cooney.
The cast features James McCluskey-Garcia and Ellonye Keniry as George and Winifred Banks, and Shalani Wood and Sebastien Skubala as their children Jane and Michael.
“There are a lot of older characters – people are going to come along and say ‘Wow! I didn’t realise there were that many good roles in this show’” says Cooney.
“Penni Hamilton-Smith is amazing” as the long-suffering cook, Mrs Brill and “Megan (Humphries) blows you away as Ms Andrew” Cooney explains. “The audience will just be in awe of what she does”.
The cast also features Callum Byrne, Chris Bussey, Neville Phillis, Maggie Wood, Russell Ford, Margaret Davis, Sean Hilton, Rikki DeJesus, Nikki Yiannoullou, Anthony Butler and a wonderful ensemble of fine Adelaide performers.
With Musical Direction from Gordon Coombes and Choreography by Sue Pole, Mary Poppins will play at the Arts Theatre from July 2 to 18 and at Elizabeth’s Shedley Theatre from July 23 to August 1.
As Bert is heard to say to Mr Banks in A Man Has Dreams, “Life’s a rum go, Guv’nor”… but one is sure this show won’t be!
Paul Rodda
When: 2 Jul to 23 Aug
Where: Arts Theatre & Shedley Theatre
Bookings: mattbyrnemedia.com.au, 8262 4906 or bass.net.au
Any assumptions that The Rep is old school fly out the window as It’s Just Sex hits the stage in its Australian premiere.
The play is hot off the off-Broadway sell-out list and hot, hot, hot in sizzling content, but not too hot for The Rep to handle; albeit it is the sexiest show they have dared to do in 107 years. Director Erik Strauts thinks Rep audiences are going to find it not just hilariously funny but also thought-provoking. He envisages lively conversations in cars and bedrooms after each performance.
The play by Los Angeles-based playwright Jeff Gould is a new-wave romantic comedy. Well, according to its director, it starts in that vein through Act I but in Act II it becomes something else “The results of the actions of Act I hit home in Act II,” he says.
It’s about three couples whose teen children are away for two whole weeks at summer camp. Child-free, the parents get together for a social evening, have a few cocktails, then a few more and then they start delving into issues and actions they normally would not broach. Partner-swapping, for one. “But,” says director Strauts, “all three relationships have significant challenges and Act II probes those challenges.
You could say that in It’s Just Sex, the subtext is 'or is it’?”
The way the play delves into many of the issues of modern marriage tapped a nerve among American audiences, resulting in the play’s runaway success. It is still running in the US and picking up lots of awards as it goes.
The couples depicted include a family therapist, a masseuse, a lawyer, an uptight nerd, a predatory novelist and a finance executive.
“It’s not an epic piece of theatre. It’s a relationship play and what attracted me to it was its comedy,” explains Strauts. “It’s not intense like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf. Nor is it deep and probing like a Shakespeare or an Ibsen. It looks at heterosexual partnership challenges, things most of us may have encountered in life. It’s about fidelity and affairs and how to handle them. As they say in the script, it is about things we usually sweep under the carpet but in the events of that night, they lift that carpet up."
Performing in this Rep production are Bronwyn Ruciak, James Whitrow, Luke Budgen, Sharon Pitardi, Tess O’Flaherty, Laura Antoniazzi, Izzy Rositano and Jonathan Johnston. Strauts is pleased with this cast and the way that Johnston was able to step in late in the piece to replace an actor who had to withdraw.
The show has been coming together well with actors honing their American accents as they go. If they fall foul of a pronunciation, Strauts’s American wife is there to put them straight.
Strauts has been busy in Adelaide theatre for nigh on 50 years. He’s 63, retired from an IT career, and has been everything backstage from sound and lighting tech to set builder, producer and stage manager. The latter is his favourite role for some reason. He’s done his share of acting but, he says, he loves directing more. He’s worked with Unseen, Blackwood, Stirling Players, Galleon, St Jude’s and now, for the first time, The Rep.
“I was aged only 14 when I got involved in theatre,” he says. “It was the first thing my parents let me do unchaperoned.”
It was not just the greasepaint and drama which lured the lad. “Theatre people always had the best parties,” he admits.
“And many pretty girls with not so many males. I’ve had two wives and I met them both on stage.”
It’s Just Sex runs at The Arts Theatre from June 18 to 27.
Book at adelaiderep.comAdelaide Repertory Theatre or 82125777