Matt Byrne Media. Arts Theatre and Shedley Theatre. July 2017
In just under a week’s time Matt Byrne Media will open the South Australian premiere of Saturday Night Fever at the Arts Theatre. Based on the John Travolta movie of the same name, and incorporating the music and lyrics of The Bee Gees, the show is sure to get audiences dancing in their seats.
The production is being designed and directed by Byrne, with musical direction by Paul Sinkinson and choreography by Sarah Williams.
The show stars Sebastian Cooper as Tony Manero, the role made famous by Travolta, along with a local S.A. cast of musical theatre veterans and newcomers.
Cooper explains that Byrne is very passionate about this project.
“He has been trying to do this show for a long time, it is close to his heart being that he grew up in that era and he loved the disco… he tells stories about going to the Arkaba and the Lion and dancing to this stuff back in the 70s.”
Originally auditioning to cover a cast member who is travelling overseas in the second half of the season, Cooper says he was pretty laid back about the audition.
“The audition process was really fun, I didn’t feel any stress, which is interesting because I was with Matt… and Sarah who I’d never met before… they made me feel really comfortable.” He confides.
“Matt broke my walls down really early, and sort of forced to me to really feel it… to bring it out of me”
A few weeks later Cooper got a call from Byrne telling him that the lead actor had to pull out due to professional commitments, and he wanted him to step up and take on the role of Tony.
Cooper recalls being taken aback. “Tony MANERO?” he exclaimed “but, I’m just the backup of the backup guy?”
Byrne had seen something in the young performer though, and told Cooper that after his audition he was really excited.
Tony Manero marks Cooper’s largest role in a musical, and to top it off the show runs for nearly a month, playing for two weeks at the Arts Theatre and two weeks at the Shedley in Elizabeth.
“It’s the longest season I’ve ever done, but it’s also the most I’ve ever had to learn” Cooper observes.
“I think I have a hand in almost every scene, there aren’t many pages in the script where I haven’t got anything highlighted. It has been a really intense experience.”
As well as being Cooper’s first time working with Matt Byrne Media, the rest of the cast were also largely unfamiliar at the start of the process.
“I worked with Amber [Platten] in the Pajama Game (Northern Light Theatre Company), but apart from that everyone else is brand new, which is really exciting to be honest”.
Cooper loves the intimate and often life-long friendships and connections you get from the theatre. He finds it a personal and often emotionally intense experience which forms strong bonds.
Byrne is renowned for taking risks and pushing the envelope with his productions and this show will be no different.
“Not only has he taken a punt on Saturday Night Fever,” says Cooper “He’s taken a punt on me.”
“It’s a little bit scary… because [you wonder] what if I’m no good?” he ponders. “But at the same time, it’s a real honour that a guy (Byrne) who has been doing this for years sees me and casts me; [it makes] you think, maybe I am doing something right.”
When it comes to the choreography Cooper is pragmatic.
“I would consider myself a mover before I call myself a dancer!” he chuckles.
Sarah Williams is the show’s choreographer and has been recreating the discotheque vibes of the era.
“There’s a couple of big group dance numbers in the show” Cooper points out. “But it’s not like [most] musicals… where everyone starts to sing and dance together for [no] reason.
“The reason we are all dancing together is because you did that in the disco… and she’s done really well to recreate that.”
Byrne has also gone to great lengths to acquire parts of the set. His centre piece will be a showstopper in its own right.
“The dance floor is the Taj Mahal of the set” Cooper exclaims.
“They had a working bee the other day, and… there is a lot going into it. The scenes take place in quite a few different areas, the family house, the disco, the bridge, and the dance studio, and they are doing their best to recreate an authentic vibe.”
Byrne has none other than Sue Winston on the mammoth task of costume design again, too.
“She is very aware of what the fashions were of the time” Cooper explains. “Our costumes are incredible [and] most of it is original.”
Cooper really wanted to avoid making his version of Tony Manero too much like John Travolta.
“I have seen the film before, but it was a long time ago.” He says. “I watched it around the same time I first watched Grease.”
He says he has avoided the film, and looking too much at Travolta.
“Whenever you google Saturday Night Fever immediately you get pictures of John Travolta with his [trademark] style and… look.
“I don’t want to be compared to John Travolta. What we are doing is completely different from the movie. It’s a similar story, but turning it into a musical, adding singing to the characters, gives them an extra dimension that the movie doesn’t have.” He continues.
The show is heavy on Bee Gees content, but surprisingly it doesn’t always sound like the well-known Bee Gees’ songs.
“It’s Bee Gees’ music, but it’s not a Bee Gees’ tribute show.” Cooper explains. “Most of it sits in my vocal range [and] I already know most of the songs.”
The musical is a collaboration of Nan Knighton, Arlene Phillips, Paul Nicholas, and Robert Stigwood. It features the songs of The Bee Gees, but isn’t like watching a juke-box musical of their repertoire.
“The arrangement by Robert Stigwood – who is from South Australia – makes it sound nothing like the originals” Cooper explains.
“People will go to the show and hear the songs and think, ‘I know what that song is but it sounds nothing like what I am used to hearing’.”
The clever arrangement means the lyrics of the songs transcend the original and develop into something else entirely, especially when applied to the situation that the characters are in.
“Iman Saleh, who play’s Bobby C, sings Tragedy” Cooper points out, “But it has changed from a disco song into a really powerful rock ballad [that] sounds like it should be by Aerosmith or Bonjovi.”
Cooper warns not to underestimate this show.
“A lot of people may think it’s not a musical, it’s just a Bee Gees show. But, they do so at their own peril.”
Saturday Night Fever will play the Arts Theatre from July 5 to 15 and Elizabeth’s Shedley Theatre from July 20 to 29.
Bookings are available on mattbyrnemedia.com.au, 8262 4906, BASS or dramatix.com.au (agency booking fees apply).
Paul Rodda
Cameron Goodall is one of the most versatile and accomplished performers on the Australian stage today - but this show has him brimming with nerves.
“It is the biggest challenge since Hamlet,” he says.
“I did a thousand performances in The Lion King. That was one kind of challenge. But this is something else.”
Indeed, to perform The Sound of Falling Stars, Goodall must embody not one but many highly exceptional musical characters.
He must be Elvis Presley and Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Kurt Cobain, Bon Scott and Jim Morrison.
He must be a pantheon of musical stars all of whom died too young.
This Cabaret Festival show springs from 1979 when Adelaide’s arts luminary Robyn Archer performed the now famous show A Star is Torn which looked at the tragic lives of great female singing stars. The Sound of Falling Stars is the male counterpart and it has been lurking quietly somewhere on the creative drawing board through the decades. Now, under commission from the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Auckland Live, it is coming to the stage, written and directed by Archer - and starring Cameron Goodall.
For Goodall, the 42-year interval is rather special. It’s actually a lifetime. His.
“That’s the year I was born, 1979,” he says.
Goodall’s lifetime so far has been one of high achievements - winner of an Adelaide Critics Circle Award for Individual Excellence and nominated for a Helpmann for his Hamlet. On the musical front, he has also won an Aria as a founding member and composer for The Audreys. He’s worked with companies major and minor, notably for Adelaide audiences, the ground-breaking Border Project. He’s been in dramas and musicals, experimental and traditional theatre, television and film. He’s written and produced. He’s an accomplished guitarist and singer. As his name suggests, he’s good at all.
Just the sort of quality Robyn Archer needed for such a special cabaret show.
“When she called, I thought ‘this is fantastic, to come over to Adelaide to do a show and collaborate with Robyn Archer',” says Goodall. “What a great combination.”
“And of course my folks were never happier.”
Goodall is Adelaide-raised and a Flinders graduate.
He used the initial rehearsal period of the show as an opportunity to bring his family over to spend time with the Adelaide grandparents. He and his actress wife, Katherine Fyffe, have two children - Lulu, 7 and Huxley, 3.
Goodall had just come through some happy down time between shows being stay-at-home dad.
Now the family has gone back to their Sydney base and he is in the final phases of preparation for the Cabaret Festival and this thrilling challenge of a show.
“All the music is locked in,” he reports.
“It is so exciting seeing it coming to life.”
He describes his process as “inhabiting the roles”.
“It is not a show of impersonations but of capturing particular aspects of the characters.
“Nor is it about costume but about casting particular light on the characters.”
The Falling Stars will be depicted chronologically, each with insights into how and why they died and what they have in common.
“Things they have in common seem to be fraught relationships with relatives and parents, and love, lacking love in their lives,” he explains.
In response to those needs, many resorted to drugs.
“Their stories are often about excess and that hedonistic lifestyle which often goes with Rock and Roll.”
Their music is a happier story than their demises.
There are several musical genres encompassed in the show and Goodall will have the backing of Enio Pozzebon on keyboards and George Butrumlis on accordion. Goodall, himself, grew up playing much of the music of the Falling Stars in bands with his father.
While most of the stars are household names suach as Elvis and Bobby Darin, Goodall says he has a particular soft spot for the less heralded musical figures in the line-up.
“Nick Drake, for instance, became a cult figure after his death,” he says.
“And then there was Phil Ochs who had a staggering career as a political songwriter but was too shy to perform live.”
Goodall reports that a friend in the US just mooted that perhaps the Ochs music will come back into fashion since the Donald Trump era is bringing political activism back into American lives.
A rising sound from a fallen star.
The Sound of Falling Stars will have its world premiere season on June 21 and 22 at the Dunstan Playhouse.
And, hopefully, confides its own star, it may get taken on the road.
Samela Harris
When: 21 and 22 Jun
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival. 3 to 25 June.
10 years on - some good, some bad - Cabaret Fringe Festival is still here. Festival Director/Founder, Paul Boylon notes, it’s never received any funding. “We still don’t have an office, we still work out of home.”
Mulling over those years and the possibilities in future one’s, provides opportunity for La Bohème’s Boylon to consider what Cabaret Fringe’s purpose is; where it differentiates itself from Adelaide Cabaret Festival and quite pointedly, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, in one significant respect - The Fringe Ambassador thing. More on that later.
There’s also the, at times, frustrating realities of Adelaide’s arts ecology, run such that for every Festival, there’s a fringe version virtually in lockstep with it. Boylon is reasonably relaxed with this. “Adelaide seems to be ‘festival centric’. We come out a lot more when there are festivals on. It’s a hard one. The Cabaret Festival seems to be getting much bigger. It’s becoming a longer festival.”
I interrupt; reminding Boylon he turned Cabaret Fringe into a month long affair not too long ago, so Cabaret Fringe got the hop on the Adelaide Cabaret Festival there.
On the touchy point of events being bigger and longer - a huge focus of heated industry discussion - Boylon is sanguine about it in respects of Cabaret Fringe. “I don’t see it necessarily as a much bigger festival than it is. We might get up to 100 shows, because we run a bit longer.”
The centenary event features 45 shows in numerous Adelaide venues, plus its famous Gala which this writer has attended and marvelled at the surprises it can spring on an audience.
As we discuss the Cabaret Fringe Ambassadors three words pop up a lot as conversation flows; “community”, “artists” and “opportunity”. Cabaret Fringe sports not one, but four Ambassadors. While Adelaide Fringe Ambassadors have a role in promoting the event and tourism, that’s not how it works for Cabaret Fringe.
“It’s about doing something for the artists. I see it as a way for them to help other artists. It’s a community based Festival, creating a space for local artists.”
More to the point they are guiding new artists. Makes sense when you remember Cabaret Fringe Ambassador and local Sunday gossip columnist, Matt Gilberston (aka Hans), got his start at La Bohème. Fabulous Anya Anastasia was also given lots of room to develop and test work now gracing big international festivals.
Clearly the community focus works, the money must work given near half a dozen acts in this year's event have been returning to Cabaret Fringe for quite a while now. Boylon chuckles pondering why. “I don’t know if we’ve changed or artists have become more accustomed to us.”
But yes, this brings us back to harsh realities of paying for an event, promoting an event so local artists have a platform to offer up their best and develop. Boylon explains, given aforementioned fact they receive no funding, it “takes a while for people to work out what you’ve got. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. We can’t afford to tout ourselves on the back of a bus!”
Yet despite the fact “after [they’ve] paid all the bills, paid the artists, there’s no income, no form of revenue in between festivals,” meaning it’s start from scratch to pay for it all over again.
Boylon is now thinking about expanding the community centred spirit of Cabaret Fringe outside of the city to regional pubs and the like. Stay tuned!
David O’Brien
Cabaret Fringe Festival 3 to 25 Jun
Bookings: cabaretfringefestival.com
Suddenly, Adelaide feels like the world headquarters of Roald Dahl.
For young and old, the musical based on his novel Matilda is wowing them on the big stage of the Festival Centre.
But outside that traditional mainstream, there is Dahl just for grownups. A new delight of Dahl arises at the Cabaret Festival.
Elise McCann, fresh from her multi award-winning performances in the role of Miss Honey in the Australian Production of Matilda, is appearing in Adelaide at the same time as the blockbuster stage show, with a new cabaret show which was inspired by her experience in Matilda The Musical on the big stage.
The more of Dahl she has experienced, the more she delights in it.
Her Adelaide Cabaret Festival show, which is part of a national tour, is called Dahlesque. And, she reveals, there’s a joyful piece of serendipity in the name which thrills her to bits.
She had no sooner conceived of a performance piece devoted to the many and varied songs inspired by Dahl writings than she heard that the word “Dahlesque” was being officially added to the English dictionary.
“Oh, my gosh. It means 'in the style of Dahl',” she enthuses. “Immediately I said 'there’s the name for my show’.”
The next piece of serendipity was finding that Matilda The Musical is on in Adelaide at the same time as Dahlesque.
“It is a co-incidence,” she laughs.
“But For one thing, it means I can get to see Matilda. I’m stoked. I never got to see it when I was in it.
“Everyone should see it. It is the best musical - definitely the best one I have been in.
“Doing it was a massive gift. I know it sounds cliché but it was one of the best experiences of my life.”
McCann believes the two shows will inform each other.
Dahlesque is a collection of diverse songs from diverse Dahl stories - Willy Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Revolting Rhymes, James and the Giant Peach…
“This new show comes back to all that makes Dahl special,” she declares.
He has been special to McCann since she was a little girl.
Dahl, Enid Blyton and CS Lewis, these were the authors of her childhood, she says.
She recalls her parents reading Dahl stories to her by night and, when she was able to read, having her read the stories back to them.
“Then Matilda came along and it was a special moment which brought all those childhood memories back,” she recalls.
“Oh, The Witches. I remember how I was terrified but I loved it at the same time.
“So, I went back and looked at Dahl’s works. All his colour and flavour make him so captivating and at the same time he is teaching beautiful lessons to children and adults.
“My new show comes back to that, to what makes Dahl so special. He reminds us to be brave and to stand up for what is right and to believe that good things can happen if you take action. He is never too saccharine.
“He is empowering.”
McCann has co-written this new show with Richard Carroll and has Michael Tyack as musical director. Her musical arranger is Stephen Amos. This is the fifth project she has worked on with Amos who was the original musical director of Matilda The Musical. Noted is their Everybody Loves Lucy hit show for which McCann was nominated for Best Cabaret Production at the 2015 Sydney Theatre Awards.
McCann is a NIDA graduate and her professional history includes a wealth of stage shows including Fiddler on the Roof and Mamma Mia as well as the Channel 7 miniseries, Peter Allen - Not The Boy Next Door.
She thinks her Dahlesque cabaret show should please audiences of all ages.
“It has adult energy but there is no inappropriate language,” she says.
“The music is colourful and represents all the different elements of his stories, his life and what he liked.
“Actually, he is the most fascinating man.”
The show will touch upon the Dahl life story, including the extraordinary battle to help his wife, Patricia Neal, when she was severely afflicted by stroke and lost the ability to speak.
“He went through a lot in his life but he made a choice not to be a victim but to grow from things,” explains McCann.
"Interestingly, after the experience with Patricia Neal, his next book was the BFG who, of course, makes up language.
It is still relevant today in a world filled with so much fear and misunderstanding of other cultures. He tells us that as a global community, we need to step out of ourselves, to understand each other, to have the ability to learn from others.”
Samela Harris
Dahlesque with Elise McCann
When: 17 & 18 Jun
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
How do we know the Cabaret Festival is a big success?
Because it can brag a brilliant burgeoning Cabaret Fringe Festival.
Therein, amid the joy of colour and movement, sequins and feathers and dazzling descants, appears Adelaide superstar and rising international star Matt Gilbertson aka Hans.
As Hans, Gilbertson is hosting the Fringe’s big Gala night in the Freemasons' Hall.
In the same venue on the next night, he’s turning on his Fringe Festival hit show, Mein Camp.
He can’t stop giggling about how the world has changed.
“Imagine me at the Freemasons’ amid the secret handshakes and all,” he exclaims.
It’s far from the spirit of Gluttony where he scored five star reviews for his high-kicking German spoof and also far from The Underbelly Hub on the Edinburgh Fringe where is will soon be performing Mein Camp.
“It will be the Edinburgh version I will be doing for the Cabaret Fringe,” he says.
“Me, the band and no girls.
“How will I survive without The Lucky Bitches? I will just have to dance harder.
“I just have them as an act of charity you know, not to add to the show. No, it’s not for the audience, a lot of whom prefer it without them…”
There’s a pause.
“I think I know how to get myself killed,” he chuckles.
There are, indeed, only so many international airfares a Fringe act can justify. The band which Hans has so kindly named the Ungrateful Bastards, are doubtless more than enough.
Gilbertson, whose day job is as gossip columnist for the mainstream daily, The Advertiser, is down to do up to 30 shows on the August trip to the UK - several in London, one of which is at Nick Zappa’s London Riviera and about 28 in Edinburgh at the Underbelly Hub.
“Scary and exciting,” he says.
Of course, with his hit show riddled with topical Donald Trump jokes, the cabaret funny man is worried about news emerging from the USA. Trump has been a good tool for comedy and, as Gilbertson points out, the comment on social and political happenings is inherent to the history of cabaret.
The official Cabaret Festival is looking very promising, he says. And it is not only because it has such an impressive Fringe.
“It has a bit more of a fringey vibe to it this year,” he opines.
“There are fewer Broadway divas and there are things like the Spiegeltent. This is interesting because part of the point of the Cabaret Festival was in that it took cabaret artistes in the establishment theatre. Now they have the Spiegeltent.”
Gilbertson knows all about performing outside conventional venues. He started out with an accordion, busking in the streets of Adelaide.
The Cabaret Fringe has generated a spectacular line-up of interesting, unusual, glamorous, amusing and talented artistes of every genre and gender. There’s Frankly Winehouse, Dolly Diamond, Cabaret Allsorts, Hot Club de Adelaide, Rusalka, Mikelangelo, Becky Blake, Mama Alto, Tim Nicholson, The Girl from Ipanema, Tomas Ford and masses of others. Their 45 shows are all over town in 16 venues from Nexus Arts and the Chihuahua Bar through La Boheme, the Arkaba, the German Club, Bakehouse Theatre, right down to the Railway Hotel at Port Adelaide and even Ayers House.
Samela Harris
The Cabaret Fringe runs from 3 to 25 June.
Tickets are on sale now.
Bookings: cabaretfringefestival.com