Perth audiences will be the first in the world to see new musical Tivoli Lovely.
Eddie Perfect has had huge success in the musical theatre realm with his breakout work Keating – The Musical, continued achievement with Shane Warne – The Musical and his Broadway hits King Kong and Beetlejuice.
For his latest work though he’s returned to the school where he learned his craft, Edith Cowan University’s WA Academy of Performing Arts, and fellow alumni member, acclaimed director Dean Bryant has returned to bring the new musical to the stage.
Over the last three years students who have been progressing through their course have been involved in development workshops for the new musical, and this month the curtains will rise on the musical that celebrates Australia’s theatrical heritage.
When an 85-year-old ex-chorus girl is teamed up with a troubled teen for a school project, an incredible story brings the Australian Tivoli circuit of 1954 to life. Composed as a love letter to Australia’s theatrical past, this hilarious black comedy about a Tivoli-conquering dance act, The Eleven Kevins, is described as a riotous celebration of dance and variety.
Guiding the project to the stage is acclaimed director Dean Bryant, another graduate of the world famous WAAPA school.
OUTinPerth chatted to Dean Bryant about the show’s development.
I can’t think of anything more exciting than a brand new theatrical work, and a musical at that. What’s your journey been with Tivoli Lovely?
It’s been incredible. Actually, it’s been the whole span of of the current third years’ education. So we came in with them, me, Eddie and Zara Stanton, the music director, when they’re in first year, about midway through, and did a two week workshop of Act One.
Then we came back next year, when they were second years, did a workshop on Act Two, later that year, a workshop of the whole thing. Now we’re meeting them before they go out into the real world, and doing the full production.
I would imagine this quite a rare experience to get in your education.
Oh my God, yeah, I remember when I was at WAAPA, we did some development of stuff, or other years did, but it was a reading, or it was like a little production, but not something with the resourcing that WAAPA has done for this, essentially being run as if it was a big scale, new, commercial musical.
The story of Australia’s vaudeville culture is an exciting one to tap into because I think it’s something most Australians have forgotten about, or never been aware of.
That’s pretty much why Eddie wrote the piece. He wanted to do something that was about the celebration of theatre, and especially Australian theatre, because we don’t really do that enough.
I guess he just got this passion. He had had the idea of a story for a very long time about a tap dancing troupe called The Eleven Kevins, which was funny because it rhymes. And then he invented a world for them to be in, which was the the world of the Tivoli.
So we did a lot of research about the Tivoli across the decades that it was the most popular art form in Australia, and basically decided to set it at the waning of it, the last few years of the Tivoli, and then find a place for this tap dancing act and find a context that made sense.
That means we’re going to get to see some tap dancing.
We are definitely. We’re getting some tap dancing. We’re getting some Latin, we’re getting some contemporary jazz, well, 50s contemporary jazz. So it’s a big dance show. There’s about 15 different dance numbers.
What sort of size cast does this have? I mean, students, you have to make sure they all have something to do.
We’ve got 41 people, so it’s all a third year and all of second year, plus one older actor, because the whole show is set in 2025 now in Perth, and it’s an 80-something year old Tivoli dancer telling her story to a young WA teenager, and then the story comes to life in their conversation.
It’s a rare thing to see 40 performers on stage.
Yeah, outside of the opera, you’ll never see it in a musical anymore. It used to be the way it was done. But now even big shows are all about, “How few can we do it with a few and still make it feel big?” So this is massive.
A lot of work’s gone in to this for Eddie Perfect, writing this and creating it. What lifespan does this has have a piece of work outside of education?
Luckily, the scale of the show has allowed us to use the 41 performers in many ways, but there is a version of the show, that’s that doesn’t really lose anything, that scales back down to a traditional, big musical at the moment, which is more like 25 people on stage, and a lot more swapping wigs.
What’s it been like working with these students when they’re on the precipice of stepping out into the world?
It’s interesting. We’ve been with them the whole time through their course. They’re very committed, the work ethic is amazing. They’re excited about what’s to come, but their minds just seem ‘in the room’ to me.
They just seem very focused on this thing we are doing right now, rather than what’s coming. We’re starting to get auditions for shows next year, so I hear them chat about that, or come and ask advice for, you know, what’s a good way to land it? But they’re so focused on this show, and what a big way to end your course!
It’s pretty rare for anyone, professional or student, to get to do a new Australian musical produced at scale. So it’s definitely setting them up for, if they’re into developments, because a lot of new work of all genres gets done around Australia. It’s given them a really clear idea of the skill set you need to do new work.
What’s it been like stepping back into the WAAPA building where you were a student yourself?
We’ve been rehearsing the full show at the ABC Studios. But we did the third workshop on campus, and it was weird. It was like I felt like I could have been there a couple of years ago, it didn’t feel like the 25 it’s been since I was actually at WAAPA myself.
You’ve just been appointed the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, a huge career milestone, tell me about the importance of the Malthouse Theatre.
There’s two main stage companies in Melbourne. Melbourne Theatre Company, obviously the Malthouse. Theatre is the other one. It’s an incredible heritage theatre. It was a Malt House, that’s where it got its name from. It was converted in the mid-90s into a theatre. It’s the company that does a lot of the risky, experimental work in Melbourne. It develops the more challenging work, it’s probably akin to what Belvoir St does in Sydney.
It’s exciting! I worked at Melbourne Theater Company for four years as Associate Director. So I got a taste for what it was to be within a company, and I really enjoyed that kind of building a larger thing, rather than just show by show by show.
So when this came along, it felt like the right time to really stop in Melbourne which is where I live, and have always lived since I moved from the country, and actually focus on building a company, rather than just moving around the country working on different shows.
Tivoli Lovely is at the State Theatre Centre from November 7-14. Tickets are on sale now.
Declaration: OUTinPerth co-editor Graeme Watson is an employee of Edith Cowan University, which includes the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
