Stars, Who Needs Them!

The latest round of cast announcements for big musicals have been long on natural talent and short on celebrity. Has the tide turned away from casting stars from outside the established theatre world? David Spicer reports.

We rolled up to the cast announcement for the forthcoming season of The Sound of Music and on a big poster was the new Maria, surrounded by her clan. At first glance I couldn’t recognise her. Amy Lehpamer (pictured wiith co-star Cammeron Daddo - photographer: Brian Geach) who was currently playing Janet in The Rocky Horror Show and is seen in there in her undies. She looked quite different in modest Nun turned Nanny attire.

When John Frost introduced her, he said the production team had to weigh up whether to cast a big star in the lead role, but instead went for what he described as an exciting new talent.

She’s well known in the industry for shining in the opportunities she’s had in Rock of Ages and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but lacks a high general public recognition factor.

So do stars matter?

“It depends on the show; if the show has a huge track record, and is straight from Broadway and all of that, and it is a must see show, you don’t really need a star…but every show is different,” said John Frost after the launch.

“We were lucky when we had Lisa McCune, fresh off the television series (Blue Heelers), when we did it before,” he said (mind you Lisa McCune was a Music Theatre graduate from WAAPA to boot).

If the lead is not a celebrity then John Frost believes there should be some in secondary or cameo roles.

“The thought was let’s cast the other roles with people that are names, that we think the public would like to see and the media would be interested in interviewing,” he said.

For this production, the better-known leads are former TV Host Cameron Daddo as Captain Georg von Trapp, Lorraine Bayly as Frau Schmidt and music theatre doyen Marina Prior as Baroness Schraeder.

“I like to have stars. I like to have Bert Newton (The Rocky Horror Show). I like all those people that are fun to have. My audiences expect that from a John Frost show. They want to see familiar names.”

John Frost says Australia only has one true musical theatre star.

"Anthony Warlow is the only musical theatre star that sells tickets," he said.

Warlow will appear as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in the same theatre slots that were originally scheduled forJekyll and Hyde in Sydney and Melbourne.

The production of Fiddler is only going ahead because of Warlow's availability.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that Jekyll and Hyde is not going ahead (or postponed as it is officially) because of Anthony Warlow's unavailability for that role.

Warlow was wooed to star in Jekyll and Hyde, as he launched the musical on its concept album with his rendition of ‘This Is The Moment,’ but apparently now thinks he is too old for the role.

Unfortunately for Opera Australia and John Frost poor ticket sales saw it having to postpone Jekyll and Hyde with Teddy Tahu Rhodes in the lead - although both have told Stage Whispers they would like to re launch with a Sydney Opera House opening down the track.

Louise Withers, the producer of Matilda, Miss Saigon and Billy Elliott The Musical does not believe in celebrity castings.

“The most important thing is to do the right thing by the product and the show. We are looking for the right ingredient for the right character and also someone who is a good company member. Hopefully that creates the magic that makes people want to see it,” she said.

Matilda, by its nature, has a substantially unknown cast because they are young children. But Louise Withers also maintained her ethos with the casting of adult principals. James Millar (Miss Trunchball), Marika Aubrey (Mrs Wormwood) and Elise McCann (Miss Honey, interviewed elsewhere in this edition) are known in the industry but have no general public recognition.

“A lot of the requirements come from casting directors from overseas, or what the director is looking for. Sometimes those parameters are very broad or very specific,” she said.

John Frost says he would have “gone a different way” if he was casting Matilda. Reacting to critics of his commercial approach, he responds, “I am the last man standing,” naming the producers in music theatre who are no longer standing. (Ouch!)

“When you have got five million dollars at stake you want to have a safety net, because it is not my five million, it is the investors’, and they are going to say, ‘who is in it?’ You can’t say Joy Blogs and Bob Smith.”

Disney, on the other hand, spends much more than five million on its shows and chooses complete unknowns for leads, as is the case for The Lion King.

“If I had budgets like Disney and shows like that I could do the same,” quips John Frost.

The only theatre company with access to genuine stars is the Sydney Theatre Company. Hollywood A-listers Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving have been regulars in recent years. Geoffrey Rush is playing King Lear at the end of this year. Its best attended production of 2014 was Cyrano de Bergerac starring Richard Roxburgh, just ahead of Macbeth (with a reduced stage capacity) played by Hugo Weaving.

In 2013 Cate Blanchett helped sell 43,000 tickets to The Maids and Hugo Weaving assisted in luring 34,000 bums onto seats for Waiting for Godot, with Tim Minchin also chipping in nicely for a similar number at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Producer Louise Withers couldn’t help but salivate at the prospect of having Matilda composer Tim Minchin on stage in Matilda, but alas stars like this are not usually available for years on end.

“He is an absolute star, unbelievably talented and humble and an incredibly nice person,” she said.

Mega stars like that also only tend to appear for “mates rates” when the producer is a not-for-profit entity such as the Sydney Theatre Company.

On Broadway the biggest name to have associated with a musical is Tony, short for Antoinette Perry, better known as the Tony Awards.

With a Tony on the billboard, a little known show can get a huge boost at the box office. After winning the Tony for Best Musical, Fun Home (based on the story of a young girl’s voyage of lesbian discovery) was on track to do five times its normal daily business.

Another musical, The Visit, penned by Chicago’s Kander and Ebb and starring genuine A lister Chita Rivera went in the other direction. It missed out on any awards and announced that it would close within a fortnight.

Back in Australia John Frost laments the lack of opportunities to make stars.

“Without a doubt we should make stars but we don’t know how you do it. We don’t have variety shows to showcase talent. Bert Newtown is not there anymore, Kerry-Anne Kennerley is not there anymore. You have got breakfast television, but the numbers are pretty dismal - 300,000 nationally.”

Louise Withers, however, does not think it is worth the trouble.

“I am not sure the star system exists in the same way it used to. The world of the internet has broken down many of the factors that created stars.”

Originally published in the July / August edition of Stage Whispers.