The Trunchformation

Eight times a week James Millar transforms from a gentle giant into the pigtail twirling school principal from hell  – Agatha Trunchbull - the arch enemy of child genius Matilda.  The full make-up and costume preparation for the musical takes just under an hour. David Spicer was invited into his dressing room for the ‘Trunchformation’.

Shylock might have demanded a pound of flesh. James Millar has sacrificed a great deal more. Six months into the run of Matilda the Musical he has lost twenty kilograms, under the extreme heat of an ultra-aerobic performance, lights, costume and padding.

“I wear an ice vest underneath the costume, which is changed at interval because it has melted and starts heating,” he said with a cheeky grin.

“That keeps me incredibly cooler, but under lights, on a rake, doing flips and q ribbon dance it does get extremely hot. When they pull the costume off, steam comes off.  It looks like I have been in a swimming pool.”

James admits he was not in the best shape when the training regimen commenced. That has all changed. How much skinnier might he be if Matilda runs for two years?

“In each scene there is a physical element. No one at drama school learns how to ribbon dance or vault. So I had to learn these new skills.

“Ribbon dancing is deceptively aerobic. Picking up a girl by the pigtails is deceptively aerobic. I am doing it with my brute strength.” (And he has to be careful not to pull her head off.)

Despite having eight performances a week, plus three additional rehearsals for both the Melbourne Matildas in training, and the Sydney Matildas in performance, James Millar generously agreed to do an additional make-up preparation just for Stage Whispers (they don’t make prima donnas like they used to).

Inside the cosy dressing room, a fat suit was hanging on a coat hanger behind the door. The mirror was crowded with cards and letters. Much of the table was swamped untidily with make-up bottles and looking down at us from a shelf was a mannequin’s head with a wig on it.

Jacqui Elliott, the head of wigs, moved in for the operation.

First some regulation powder was applied while he was in civilian attire.

Then lots of lines were drawn on his face. He is supposed to be unattractive after all. A few more coats of make-up, then comes the crowning moment - the wig.

A few bursts of hairspray are needed to keep it straight.

“When I get my wig on, that is when I feel my greatest sense of transformation. It is very much like my hair is pulled back in a bun. I suddenly feel like a head mistress.”

Having to rehearse again with the children out of costume is a jolt.

“Now that we have been performing it so much, when we got back into rehearsal I feel extremely exposed in a weird way. I think other actors also feel it is weird to hear that voice coming out my throat, but not seeing the image.”

When Stage Whispers visited the dressing room of Jemma Rix and watched her being transformed into the green witch for Wicked, she noted that she was cursed to sometimes accidentally eat the green make-up and found it impossible to remove all traces of it.

James has a similar problem with glue. His warts and all performance includes, yes, a wart, attached with coarse glue.

“I take plenty of glue home because I forget to use the glue remover. To get the rest of the make-up off it takes one big shower, which is one of the highlights of my day. It all largely washes off.”

Completeing the transformation is discolouring of his teeth, which he ruefully notes does nothing to help him “get a date”.

He needs help from his assistant to put the fat suit and dress on. Then he is ready to stomp off to perform in front of another 1500 or so people.

His performance won him Best Actor in a Supporting Performance in a Musical at the Sydney Theatre Awards.

Having such a heavy commitment on stage has distracted James from his other passion, writing the book and lyrics to his own musicals. With composer Peter Rutherford he penned The Hatpin  -  a gothic thriller,  Love Bites - a bitter sweet romantic comedyand A Touch of Chaos - loosely based on his father’s experience in escaping from the religious sect The Exclusive Brethren.  The Hatpin and Love Bites have had a number of professional and amateur productions, whilst A Touch of Chaos was showcased in 2014 at the Victorian College of the Arts.

James himself is a graduate of the music theatre course at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and writing at the University of Technology Sydney.

He caught the acting/writing bug whilst in High School when his parents put him in Saturday morning drama classes at The Sydney Talent Company. 

“I loved acting and came from a family that had no heritage in it.”

The Saturday morning classes led to guest spots on Home and Away and A Country Practice.

He says his next musical theatre creation will be something lighter.

“I do love my dark stuff. If I do write it will have to be a joyful escape from fatigue. Peter Rutherford and I are looking to do an adaptation but we can’t quite pinpoint what we want to adapt yet.”

The success Tim Minchin has had composing the music for Matilda, adapted from the novel by Roald Dahl, might prove inspirational.

However James crossed swords (in jest) with Tim about  “the joyful but tortuous nature of his composing ” when they met at a pub.

That was “in reference to the moment in the second act (for the song) ‘The Smell of Rebellion’. I do three verses of very rapid patter, which require a lot of breath. But I have already lifted a kid and done a ‘burpy’ and all sorts of things.”

On Facebook James wrote.

"How dare you write 240 bars of patter before making your actor leap over a vault, you dastardly sonofabitch?"

Has James ever been so unkind to a performer in a musical he has written?

“Probably,” he confesses.

“In The Hatpin, that poor little girl has to sing a very complex melody at the end of the show.”

James is an avid user of Facebook and being one of his 1000 plus ‘friends’ sometimes I feel his life resembles The Truman Show.

“I do like to post moments of amusement, but I do keep some things private.”

His most popular post was the time he shared his YouTube audition for the part of Mary Poppins.

“Apparently it went to Cameron Mackintosh and it made him laugh.”

James also posted this whimsical story from his time living in England.

“Thinking about my long lost pal, Robert. A homeless guy in London I gave a Christmas Roast to three Christmases ago outside my apartment. And who I befriended immediately ...and who died only two days after.

“I still have residual guilt from the fear that I poisoned him for Christmas (NB He was 72 and had liver cancer, but still - I'll always wonder if my roast and, moreover, the delicious glass of wine I gave him, knocked him off the edge before the New Year).”

James also has the odd social campaign and cheerio.

“Why do they even MAKE black jellybeans? Nobody eats them. Such a waste of a lolly. PS If you eat them, unfriend me immediately. They taste of hatred.”

“My very-first best friend in life...who also became my very-first (and only) girlfriend...came to see Matilda today. She came to see the show with one of her two sons. And her belly was swollen with a new resident of the planet on his or her way. It made my heart as happy as heaven. Love you Kate Clinton. X”

Each year there is a poignant tribute to his friend from WAAPA Matthew Leonard, who died at the age of 28 in a plane crash in Papua New Guinea.

Last year James walked on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in his memory.

“He was my best friend.”

As James is taking his boots off I notice a tattoo around one of his ankles. It is Matthew Leonard’s name in hand writing.

“I found his signature and took it to a tattoo parlour to copy it.”

James has other regrets too.

“Everyone on my newsfeed is posting first-day-at-school pictures of their kids and it's making me very happy, but also very sad, because I don't have a kid to send to school. Where can I purchase one last minute so I can feel involved?”

Maybe James could find one at work given all the time he spends in rehearsals with children.

“I have to develop a rapport with the kids as they are all I have to work with.”

But has he ever been at the end of his tether and wanted to behave like a Trunchbull?

“I think I get it out of my system on stage and it is a relief to be a nice person when I get outside of it.”

Matilda The Musical is currently playing at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre.

Originally published in the March / April 2016 edition of Stage Whispers.

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