| Scoring Shane Warne |
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| Friday, 12 December 2008 01:39 |
 Daren Pope chats with Eddie Perfect about music theatre and cricketing legends.Australians like their musicals, especially if they’re lavishly staged and performed in American accents. At least, that was the theory, until home-grown products Priscilla Queen of the Desert – The Musical and Keating! The Musical took the country by storm, winning a mass audience and simultaneously redefining the musical theatre landscape. Our national pass time of ‘taking the piss’ is at the heart of both Priscilla and Keating! In Priscilla it was the oddity of three drag queens on a quest to conquer the Red Centre; in Keating! the irony of a tough-talking Prime Minister who preferred antique clocks to a glass of beer. A new musical based on the tabloid life of cricket champion Shane Warne hopes to repeat this winning formula. With satirical musical genius Eddie Perfect at the helm, direction from theatre heavyweight Neil Armfield, and script supervision from Casey Bennetto, the man behind Keating! The Musical, you’d have to wonder why it wouldn’t work. But this is the entertainment industry, and there are no free rides, as Eddie Perfect well knows. “It’s just a little terrifying,” he tells CANVAS. “For me it’s been three years of intense work crafting this score and then it comes down to convincing people, and I don’t think you can hype up something like this – the show has to find its audience and if it’s the right show at the right time and it’s done well enough, then people will come. I really believe that.” Since bursting onto the stage in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2002, Eddie Perfect has been the darling of the music theatre and cabaret scenes. His solo shows, Drink Pepsi, Bitch and Angry Eddie toured extensively here and overseas, and a distinct talent as a composer led to collaborations with Max Gillies in The Big Con and projects at the Malthouse theatre: Babes in the Wood and Voicing Emily. By all rights, Eddie Perfect should have been snapped up by the established music theatre world but, in his own words, he has a “destructive relationship” with the traditional musical theatre form. “It’s like a partner who cheats on you 90 percent of the time and you’re hanging in there for the 10 percent when you know it can be really, really good,” Perfect says. “I know that Australia seems to want to go out and see these beautiful lush Broadway remakes, and there’s nothing wrong with that but it’s all a bit obvious. Keating! succeeded because it’s a brilliant piece of writing and it contacted its audience. “What we’re continuing on with is using our own icons, whether political or sporting, and really investigating their lives and celebrating them – but in an Australian way, which is very ironic and tongue in cheek.” So what can we expect from Shane Warne The Musical? The show’s promotion promises ‘a leg-spun yarn about what it means to fall arse-backwards into the Australian Dream and emerge a champion’. Eddie Perfect’s original songs roast Warne’s colorful off-field activities; from the infamous womanising and text messaging through to his mum’s diet pill debacle. But it’s not all totally irreverent. There’s also the celebration of an exceptional sportsman whose cack-handed technique redefined the art of spin bowling. It’s this duality that makes for a great music theatre yarn, Eddie Perfect explains. “What we do doesn’t convert into statistics, and statistics don’t lie,” he says of Warne’s sporting prowess. “Some things you’re handed on a platter and some things you have to work for; and for a lot of middle class men in Australia, opportunities are handed to them, and it’s not until you reach a road block that you have to kind of fight for the things you want. Shane Warne had to do that.” Want to bowl a maiden over? Free tickets to Shane Warne The Musical should do it! For your chance to win a double pass to Shane Warne on Sunday December 28, email
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