The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 19

The Age, Saturday 14 February IS8I 19 THE isM. AGE welkeimdl review THE ACTORS are edgy and nervous. The producers are frazzled and tense. The audience is tingling with anticipation. The critics are ready to pounce.

It's the opening night at the theatre. Writer JANE SULLIVAN and photographer PETER CHARLES were at Her Majesty's last Saturday for the first night of The Best Little i Whorehouse in Texas'. This is what they saw. a mm WMh I VfWr SOMEBODY REMEMBERED the chickens the day before the show was due to open in Melbourne. They needed two of them: one to squawk and flutter its way out of a sack, and another as an under- study.

The chickens were despatched from a local farm and strutted their stuff magnificently at Friday night's preview. In the words of publicity man Paul Barnard: "They didn't put a beak But would they be all right on the big night? Dazzled by unfamiliar lights and deafened by audience applause, chickens are notoriously liable to lose their cool. And would Lorraine Bayly's foot slip in the in-I evitable' result? It might seem unlikely, tout tradition has it that if anything is going to go wrong with a show, it will go wrong on opening night "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas' opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne last Saturday. It was billed as "a new musical comedy" but it has already been on the boards for a while. The Broadway production ran for three years.

The $500,000 Australian production, staged by Mike Walsh, David Price and Malcolm Cooke, opened in Sydney last Sep- tember for 15 weeks, then moved to Adelaide for another four weeks. Melbourne run should last 12 weeks. You would think that at this stage, everyone would be relaxed 'and confident, ready to sail once more through something they know backwards. Not so. There is a new stage with a whole new set of technical problems and a new sound light system to construct the lamps alone take one-and-a-half up- On opening day Melbourne they are still tinkering with the show, rescheduling the intermission for 12 minutes earlier and putting in a few new lines to accommodate Ithe gap.

One number ended with two of the chorus girls turning and immobile; now all the girls must remember to turn and freeze. They are worrying what Mel- bourne will make of the show. The Sydney' critics raved; the advertisements are splashed with quotes like "a "a -glittering spectacular production" and "the girls are The Adelaide critics are not apparently they were more sniffy. And it is anyone's guess which way the Melbourne critics will jump. Most important of all, the mere words "opening night" are enough to bring on the dry mouth, the tightening of the stomach, the racing of the pulse and all those other reflexes the most seasoned performer can seldom control.

"It's what you live for: showbusi-ness wouldn't be anything if you didn't have opening night," says the show's third lead Mona Richardson. "Everybody knows that's what it's all about. All the critics, all brass are there looking at you. "You feel a closeness with the cast, there's tension always, and glamor in the air it's all. there.

You've got to work through it and get through it and still hold your head up. "Afterwards either everybody's happy, it's a relief, or you feel, what a disaster and you know it. Nobody has to tell you. The promoters are very drunk, either because they are happy or because it was terrible." Mona, 28 is a singer with a huge, husky voice that seems to burst quite improbably from her small person. She starts her First Night day sipping very strong black coffee in her Lonsdale Heights flat, just round the corner from the theatre.

'Sounds' blares away on the black and white TV screen. In one corner there is a portable electric piano with a musical score for 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother lying open on top. Mona is teaching herself to play the piano in her spare time. She won't have any time to play today. She started her career as -a hot gospelling little girl at a Baptist church in Oklahoma.

"I loved the roaring kicking ones that made everybody happy. I didn't have much choice, my grandmother used to push me in there anyway." She moved via Supremes imitations at the school hop to eight years of cabaret, first at Las Vegas and then around the world. She is not naturally talkative, but with a little encouragement she bub-, bles over into imitations of her granny on the telephone (very slow "Uh Las Vegas gossip got that job because she's out to and shocked matinee audiences in Adelaide (hands oveo mouths, a sharp intake of breath). Her role as Jewel, maid to the whorehouse madam (Lorraine Bayly), is a tricky one in several ways. The audience already knows and loves Miss Bayly and her co-star Alfred Sandor; Mona is a relatively unknown cabaret singer from Los Vegas in her first stage play.

She is in a part that was originally played by a much older and larger woman, a red hot momma type. She leads the whorehouse girls in 'Twenty-Four Hours of Lovin', the first number that could be described as "Jewel is this whole thing: the wig, the exercises, the make-up, the cowboy boots. When I get through all that I'm starting to become Jewel. She's my other side, the happy-go-lucky relaxed lady. "The other side of me is very serious: I try to be disciplined.

You have to try and stay on top of things, forget about what you're going to be doing next" In other words, forget about first night and become Figures from the first night: watching from the "wings (left); Mona Richardson in her dressing room (top); stage hand at work (middle, left); producers Malcolm Cooke and Mike Wa Ish confer (middle, right); the scene outside Her Majesty's at 8 p.m.; The Aggies and their show-stopping football scene. ingless little incantations like "Toy toy" or "Break a leg" instead. Mona is also nervous about people who whistle in the theatre. "I reckon we don't need any extra bad luck," she says. continued Review 3 Geoffrey Gougeoh over the intercom.

"Beginners, this is your half-hour call, thank you, chookas." That is one of those theatre superstitions. It is bad luck to say "Good so you utter mean National Gallery of Victoria 180 St. Kilda Road. Naar Prince Bridge. 2 tops ft i Backstage is quiet and faintly depressing.

Mona heads down cramped corridors, past thick beige paint peeling in places, holes cut in the wall for fire-fighting equipment. "This is theatre glamor!" she announces in her tiny bare dressing room with its view of a corrugated iron roof. Actors Doug Scroope and Peter Whitford, who share the dressing room next door, have at least tarted it up in the spirit of the production, with gold boots round the wall and gold streamers hanging from the ceiling. The centrepiece of the decor is a rubber chicken, with "Made In Japan" written on its groin. Actor Jon Sidney, a gaunt figure in a much ripped and patched dressing gown, is keeping a six-week-old cocker spaniel in his room.

"He's a theatrical dog, born in a trunk. He's called Rufus after my role." Rufus pads round the room in search of something to chew. Mona slips out on to the stage in her dressing gown for a few warm-up exercises. She faces the non-existent audience. Behind her a man is tuning the Lone Star Band's piano.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Whorehouse Company says assistant stage manager CURRENT EXHIBITIONS: (1) French Painting: Tha Ravolutinary Daeadaa. closes 18 Fabruary (admission: adults S3, concession S2. family (2) Towards Abstraction: A Selection of Australian Art of tha 1980a (3) Horizons and Beyond. (4) 19th Century Costume from tha Collection. (6) 20th Century Australian Ceramics from tha Collection.

(8) Selected Works from tha MtcheB Endowment 3, from 17 Fabruary. GENERAL ACTIVITIES AND INFORMATION: lectures: Porcelain Making China around 1800. by Susan Artmtnn. Third Floor Thaatrette. 11.30 am on 15 Fabruary and 12.30 pm on 17 Fabruary.

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Adults 80c children 40c family $1.80. Wad. 10 am to 9 pm, 'pay-aa-you-wish' after 6 pm. Closed Mondays except public holidays. For inquire tel.

62 7411. CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS: HILL OF CONTENT BOOKSHOP (86 BOURKE STREET) 1 JeweL "Because if you don't believe it, the people out there are not going to believe it." It is nearly 1 pm. She grabs her vitamin pills, her iron tablets and her vanity case with the cracked mirror inside the lid and heads for the theatre, snatching 10 minutes for a toasted sandwich and a cup of tea at a nearby cafe. The cast is sitting In the stalls to hear Ian Tasker the production co-ordinator read "the notes" regular criticisms of the last performance or rehearsal: sometimes quite harsh. It is all considered too sensitive and personal for the Press, and I am asked to leave.

Coming back I catch the tail end of his advice: "Drop all the little things you've picked up on the way and just watch each other very closely You've got to have faith in your own talent before you can honestly relate to anyone The afternoon dress rehearsal is scheduled for 2 pm, but because of various changes in the show which must be checked first, it starts more than an hour late and finishes around 6 pm. The cast give their all to an audience of two producers, one or two sound men and two small boys. Meanwhile a new problem develops. Aleeta Gai Northey, one of the best dancers in the chorus, has a painful lump under her ribs. She is taken to hospital and doctors diagnose a pulled muscle.

No one knows IF YOUR first night is going to go wrong, then it might as well go spectacularly wrong. The premiere of Frederick D'Erlanger's opera Tess' in Naples in 1906 was upstaged by a volcano. "Mount Vesuvius behaved most unkindly to me," complained the distraught DErlanger when the volcano chose the first act of his opera to burst into violent eruption. The critics, were kind about the little they had seen, but neither critics, audience nor cast dared stay in the theatre to see Tess' out. Volcanic eruptions are presumably acts of God or of the Devil.

But most of the first night disasters that pepper theatre history are due to acts of man. One culprit was the anonymous clerk who failed to send Richard Wagner all the parts of the dragon for the first night of 'Siegfried' at Bayreuth. The dragon had to go on minus its neck, with Its head stuck straight on to its torso which led to much scoffing at Siegfried and sympathy for the poor deformed monster. Then there are the pitfalls of overdone sets and props and underdone rehearsals. Every time the curtains opened on Intimate Review' at its London premiere in 1930, the audience watched horrified scene-shifters trying whether she will be fit enough to go on stage tonight.

Producer Malcolm Cooke is all too used to it. "In Sydney it seemed like I was running a hospital rather than a theatrical production. Even members of the band were going down with viruses. They're always on diets, they get run down and the tension mounts. Usually they get through opening night and then they go down." Louis Jourdan is coming tonight, he says.

So are Bert Newton, Don Lane, Tony Barber, Derryn Hinch But he fears we will not see the glitter of the Sydney first night. "There the invitations said 'Dress country glamor and they were all ringing each other to find out what that was. Suzanne Steele in Annie Oakley gear, Robyn Archer in a false moustache as a sheriff, Indians all over the place stunning. But can you see Melbourne people doing that?" After the dress rehearsal, Mona changes and goes back to her flat for an hour's sleep. At 7.30 pm, 45 minutes before the curtain goes up, she is back in the theatre.

On the notice board there are telegrams and good luck cards, including one from "The Clean Show Across The Road" ('They're Playing Our Song'), to scuttle out of the way. Miss Florence McHugh sang the final song while the chorus of Greek nymphs battled to separate two of. their number who had their headdresses hopelessly entangled. There was never a second night. And surely someone should have given a better briefing to the firing squad who shot Tosca the heroine instead of Cavaradossi the hero at the San Francisco Opera in 1961.

All they had been told was "Shoot" and "Exit with the Nothing daunted, Tosca refused to be wounded and threw herself to her death off the balcony; the way she was supposed to die. Dutifully exeunting with the principals, the firing squad threw themselves off the balcony after her. Sometimes the blame for a disastrous first night must fall on the person who has written the disastrous play. But author Lord Newry's fatal mistake on the first night of 'Ecarte' in the Old Globe Theatre in London in 1870 was to slip real champagne into the hampers for the picnic scene. As the play went on, the actors became more and more inclined to forget their lines, bump into props and dissolve into giggles.

The male lead, Mr Fairclough (an Australian) started shouting all his lines, until he fell We wish to advise our customers that the Hill of Content Bookshop is temporarily closed for renovations. This famous Melbourne bookshop is being remodelled to provide better display and ease of shopping while retaining the traditional atmosphere of the Hill of Content Watch for the re-opening announcement (Phone enquiries to Hill of Content can still be made during normal trading hours on 6622711.) aiihoudipWiTes. Five individual fiouses denedby pYden setting. ceiling, cmdhambric-the tradition MEET DOUG WALTERS: 115 ELIZABETH ST, CITY Headcfficateieoioesfoai. You can meet Doug Walters and obtain your personally autographed copy of his new book "The Doug Walters Story" ($9.95) on Friday 20 February between LOO and 2.00pm at Collins Booksellers, 115 Elizabeth Street (between Collins and Little Collins Street).

HIGHPOINTWEST, MARIBYRNONG Collins Booksellers has arranged for Doug Walters to conduct a free coaching clinic in the Centre Court at the Highpoint West Shopping Centre on Saturday 21 February between 10.15 and lL45am. At the same time you can obtain your own personally autographed copy of his new book "The Doug Walters Story" asleep. Leading lady Miss Nlta Nicotina told the audience they were "beastly They responded by laughing and booing the play off the Stage. Misguided attempts to ginger up the audience have reduced many a first night to ruins. London's most renowned laugher Adam Drummond was persuaded to come to the first night of 'She Stoops to Conquer' at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1773.

He laughed so much and so loudly that no one took any notice of the play. Even when his back was forcibly turned away from the stage, he went on laughing. 'She Stoops to Conquer survived its first night to become a classic. No such luck for 'The French Touch', a 1945 production where some enterprising promoter decided to flood the programmes, the usherettes and the ventilating system with French perfume. So devastating was the effect that half the first night audience crawled out while the other half fell asleep.

(Examples of first night horrors are taken from 'The Book of Heroic Failures' by Stephen Pile; and 'Great Operatic Disasters' by Hugh Vickers, both published by The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty. Ltd.) 01 collins booksellers 22 branches: 144SwanstonSt401 SwanstonSt 115 ElizabethSt Australia Arcade Suburbs Knox City Northland Doncaster Shoppingtown Airport West Highpoint West Maribyrnong Greensborough ShoppingCentre Chirnside Park. Lilydale 843 Burke Rd. CamberwellBallarat 47-51 Bridge St'Geelong: Griffiths ni i i a feRCHANT BUILDERS DOOKSiore ueeiong oono ftiso nui ACI 2423.