On your brooms: musical witches poised to clean up
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday July 25, 2009
THE Broadway musical Wicked is tipped to make a clean sweep at the annual Helpmann Awards on Monday.The blockbuster has been nominated for 12 awards, including for best musical, best female lead actors for Lucy Durack and Amanda Harrison, and best supporting male actor for Rob Guest, who died last year.The $12 million show about the witches of Oz is up against Opera Australia's revival of My Fair Lady, Eddie Perfect's new work Shane Warne The Musical and Spamalot, which played in Melbourne but never got to Sydney because of poor ticket sales.The acclaimed revival of Chicago, starring Caroline O'Connor and Sharon Millerchip, was ineligible under the competition rules because it has already won Helpmann Awards.Wicked's producers anticipate a lengthy run in Sydney although they concede that the market is harder than Melbourne where it has been playing since July last year.Other than Avenue Q at the Theatre Royal, Wicked will largely have the field to itself when it opens at the Capitol Theatre in September, at least until Mamma Mia! ups the stakes when it returns to the Lyric Theatre, Star City, in October as part of its 10th anniversary tour.The musical's co-producer, Louise Withers, said the best time to revive Mamma Mia! was when the chips were down. "The market needs a pick-me-up and we're not trying to overplay this it's only a 15-week season in Sydney," Withers said."I believe there is a new market for Mamma Mia! and we've tried to keep the prices affordable. There's a whole new audience who've seen the movie yet didn't know it was originally a stage musical. "Of all the shows I've worked on this is the one where people constantly ask, 'When are you bringing it back?' "Withers said Mamma Mia! opened in New York about five weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."There was a question about whether it should go ahead but it was deemed the perfect time because it was frivolous and fun, a tonic in tough times ... It's like slipping into a pair of comfortable slippers."One of Australia's best-known producers, John Frost, said Sydney was a tough market."It's definitely harder than other cities in Australia but Chicago has done tremendous business and has had a fantastic critical and audience response, and Wicked is selling extremely well," he said.The Capitol and the Lyric are the city's only state-of-the-art theatres capable of housing the productions.The city's shortage of large-scale theatres means that the major commercial players continue to use Melbourne and increasingly Brisbane as a first port of call.They predict the situation will worsen when Opera Australia relocates to one of the venues when the Opera Theatre is temporarily closed for an overhaul.Recently Jersey Boys had its Australian premiere at Melbourne's Princess Theatre and Mary Poppins follows suit next July when it opens in Melbourne ahead of Sydney, primarily to avoid a clash with Wicked and having to compete for the same dollar."The ever-decreasing tourism dollar makes it a challenge [for producers] but having a number of shows in the market bolsters tourism," Withers said."You can't have a musical war because you've only got two houses [the Capitol and the Lyric] to play."We need a new 1500-seat city otherwise it means shows get locked out or go to Melbourne until a theatre becomes available."
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
