Anthony Warlow’s Broadway ‘Insult’
Music Theatre Superstar Anthony Warlow is returning home for a national concert series after experiencing what he describes as the ‘insult’ of living and performing on Broadway. He spoke to David Spicer from New York about the differences between the Australian and Broadway Music Theatre scenes.
Anthony Warlow had just finished his stretch as Daddy Warbucks in Annie last year, in the Broadway production directed by James Lapine, when he returned to Australia for a concert.
But after a week back in Oz, with an Aussie summer looming, he headed straight back to The Big Apple to experience a more relaxed life as a New Yorker who did not have eight performances a week.
“I am not a summer boy. I love the cold. I swell up in the heat,” he said.
That seems an unfortunate characteristic for a person who makes a living in a costume and make-up under the heat of a spotlight.
“Ah but there’s something magical about that,” he quips.
For anyone with music theatre in their veins there is also something magical about living in New York.
“Everything is at the touch of a button. The arts scene is extraordinary.
“Just in the subway yesterday the busking was something you would pay $150 at a bar to hear. You are at a restaurant and you don’t call ‘waiter’, you call ‘actor’. Everyone is waiting to do the next show.
“I feel very comfortable in the community and have been surprisingly recognised and accepted very readily here.
“A lot of people have said why would you do Annie as your first Broadway musical? I had a good very reason; the fact that I was showing myself as Anthony. I didn’t have any wigs or moustache. It was just me. Any audience member would see me in my own guise. Also the great honour of playing a role that is iconic in the musical canon - to play a New Yorker.”
Did he receive any comments about why an Australian was playing a quintessential New Yorker?
“I expected that. But I certainly didn’t get it. A lot of the theatre community were basically saying, ‘It’s about time you were here.’ That was a shock to me. I got many letters from fans, who wanted to meet me.”
As well as offering many delights, New York can be very hard work.
“It is a joy and a tough mistress. New York is an insulting city. It insults your senses. In the Christmas season there is a flood of people. If you are the worker and have to walk from your hotel or apartment… you walk through the insult of people to get to your theatre and made up.
“You deal with getting out of the theatre. I walked for most of my time. I was in the theatre one night. When I came out the whole city had a blanket of snow and I thought this is wonderland. That was all very well until you start walking in it and slip over four or five times.
“The upside is the excitement level. In that parade of stars, that is a real shot in the arm. The Disneyland of the award season. But then you have to go back to doing eight shows a week.
Now that Annie is over Anthony Warlow has been concentrating on preparing for a national concert series.
He was captivated by the talent of Faith Prince, who was his co-star and is a Tony award winner.
“The minute she walked in I felt a sympatico with her. We are like a couple of siblings. We are of an age. We laugh and lament and praise what theatre is.
“I said, what about I bring you to Australia. You can be my excess baggage.”
Anthony says Faith is a magical cabaret performer, which contrasts with his style of concerts with big orchestras. He says they are working on something different about relationships, using both classic and modern musicals.
“We’re sitting in a room with hundreds of scores to come up with a show, picking very clever eyes out of the material, (exploring things like) having a classic long marriage, living together, anger and realising people are meant for each other. We found a beautiful song that was cut from I Do! I Do!
“The second act will have better known songs including snippets from Guys and Dolls and Fiddler on the Roof, also celebrating “the joy of what we do – entertaining.”
The entertainment business in New York is markedly different from Australia, both in good and bad ways, he says. He notes that in Australia when you are in a long-running musical you feel ownership of it.
“Here it’s almost as if people working on a show expect to move onto the next thing straight away. Most people are thinking, ‘while I am doing this I am auditioning for another show’. It’s one conveyor belt of job opportunities. A show could open one week and be closed the next.
“Another thing I was a little shocked at - in Australia when I’m headlining a show I only go off if I am ill or injured and of course the flack that I get from producers and audience members who write letters, boo and hiss. Here it is the norm for people to have registered time off. People say, ‘I am going to have a couple of personals this week’. I have been to shows where Nathan Lane is off and people in the audience think we’ll come back to see him another day.
“It is also a matter of not wanting to damage yourself. I could go on and I’ll sing those notes and scream my voice out, and within a month you will have no voice and no career. People only want you while you are good and healthy and fit. No-one is indispensable.”
After his concert tour of Australia Anthony Warlow says he is looking forward to an extended rest.
Whateverhis future holds he has had his full of both Annie and The Phantom of Opera, which he’s performed now for years on end.
Surely the lines from those shows must be permanently etched on his psyche?
“Isn’t it funny. They come up when you don’t expect them to. Then someone says what is that line from Annie but I won’t have a clue. I have to go through the whole scene to get it.”
No doubt he’ll have some new lines to learn pretty soon.
Anthony Warlow and Faith Prince Direct from Broadway: Adelaide, June 10; Perth, June 14; Melbourne, June 20 & 21; Sydney, June 27 & 28 and Brisbane, July 4 & 5.
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Images: (from top) Anthony Warlow and Faith Prince; Anthony Warlow in Doctor Zhivago (photographer: Kurt Sneddon); Grace (Julie Goodwin), Annie (Lucille Le Meledo) and Daddy Warbucks (Anthony Warlow) in the Australian production of Annie and Faith Prince as Ursula as The Little Mermaid.
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