Musical fever is running high in Melbourne; Mary Poppins is delighting audiences at Her Majesty’s Theatre, West Side Story is burning up the Regent Theatre on Collins Street, and Hairspray is set to do the same in early October. Onstage it may look like fun and games, but backstage it’s another story — one that involves its fair share of blood, sweat, and tears.
Almost 1,000 adults and over 300 children auditioned for the lead roles alone in Mary Poppins. The panel had to know exactly what they were looking for. “We needed people who could be quite inventive,” resident choreographer Lisa O’Dea explains. “For instance, one of our biggest numbers Step in Time required a very androgynous energy from the chimney sweeps, whereas Jolly Holiday, another big production number, needed the females to be quite feminine, like the Edwardian women of the period in which the show is set. So we required people who could do that cross-over.”
Over at the Regent, co-dance captain Brendan Yeates remembers his audition for West Side Story well. “It was short, but very intense. I was auditioning as a Jet, and we learnt the major dance breaks from the number “Cool”, which has to be one of the hardest numbers in the entire show.” After the first cut was made, Brendan and the other dancers had to do a ballet combination and sing a song from the show. Then came the wait to hear if he had been called back for the final day of auditions.
“We basically did everything we did on the first day, to see how things had settled we’d gone over everything. We also had to read some scripts. It's quite intimidating with a panel of six or seven watching you.”
West Side Story is based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. As in the timeless play, two young people meet, fall in love and pledge their eternal loyalty to one another. The couple are denied a happy future as a result of the intolerance and hatred of their two antagonistic cultures. The musical's dance routines are the work of legendary choreographer Jerome Robbins, whose other Broadway hits included The King and I and Fiddler on the Roof. He was an equally acclaimed ballet choreographer, creating over 60 works for some of the world's leading ballet companies. The current Australian production has been restaged by Joey McKneely.
Mary Poppins, meanwhile, is adapted from the beloved books by Australia's own P. L. Travers and the classic 1964 Walt Disney film. The Australian production of Mary Poppins includes all of the best loved songs from the film, such as Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar, Jolly Holiday, Step in Time, Feed the Birds and, of course, Supercali- fragilisticexpialidocious. The dances for Mary Poppins were created by U.K. choreographers Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear.
Hairspray will showcase original routines from Australia’s own Jason Coleman. “I choreographed the show before I watched the other versions of it. When the producer asked me to do Hairspray, I started looking at the score and at the book, listened to the sound track, read the script, and absorbed it all that way. I think the best way to get things to come out for me is through my body with my steps. ” Hairspray follows the story of Baltimore’s resident big girl, Tracy Turnblad, whose passion for dance wins her a spot on local television dance programme, The Corny Collins Show. Coleman intends to give the musical a dance make-over, drawing inspiration from such famous sixties dance moves as the jitterbug, the jive, or as the dancers on the Corny Collins Show would suggest,
“Twist twist twist twist, Mashed potato, Mambo!”
Whilst the musicals are each unique in style, the rehearsal schedule for the dancers is much the same for all. The dancers arrive between 9 and 10 a.m. for a physical warm-up of up to an hour, before being put through their paces for another eight hours.
“When we started on West Side Story, we’d had about six weeks of rehearsal all up,” says Yeates. “We’d start off with a ballet class, and we did ballet five days a week, just so that everyone could build up their strength. We now only do it three days a week, which is nicer on the body.” After two weeks of learning the various routines and scenes, the rest of the time was spent polishing material. “Our director tried to tap more into the emotional side of things, to bring more out of us in the choreography and turn all of us dancers into actors as well, which was really wonderful.”
Moving from the studio into the theatre is a big part of the learning curve for the performers. They get used to their dressing rooms, the floor, and their costume and wig components. The less tangible aspects of the show also need to be mastered, explains O'Dea. “After a two-week tech-ing period, we went into a period of ten weeks of previews, where the performers used the audience to learnt their responses, timed laughter and other such things. Then we opened.”
Rehearsal hours are eventually cut back after all of the routines have settled into the dancers’ bodies. But relaxation is not a concept that sits too comfortably with West Side Story’s Brendan Yeates. “I’m a bit of a gym junkie, I don’t like to relax too much. I’m usually at the gym six days a week as well as doing this show. On our one day off a week, we’ve just kind of been exploring Sydney; 
occasionally I get a massage or take someone else’s ballet class. We all just try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, so we try to give our bodies a bit of a break. Sometimes you just need to stay in bed for as long as you can and watch movies — whatever your body is feeling that week.”
The work, however, won’t stop when the musical ends. Yeates stresses the importance of staying in condition even when there are no jobs lined up in the immediate future. “I’m very big on ballet,” he informs me. “I don’t know... I think a lot of dancers agree, it’s just such a wonderful foundation for any kind of dance, and I’m a big stickler for getting into class as much as possible. When you’ve done a show for so long, your body can hold on to it and forget how to do some other things, so it’s really nice just to remember your technique.”
Asked what his advice to aspiring dancers would be, Yeates replies, “you can’t just be good at one thing, you’ve got to be an all-round triple threat. I think its really important to take time to focus on your singing and acting, as that’s what is going to get you the job.”
Equally vital is the ability to do a good audition. “You can’t get nervous about things like this. The panel wants to see the best in you, and if you can’t be the best that you can be whilst you're nervous, then it's not going to work out for you.”
O'Dea believes in the importance of sound technique. “When dancers do big shows, their bodies get tired. If your body is strong, it means you'll have a minimum of injuries. Also, it means that the baseline for your performance will always be more than adequate.”
But if being a dancer in a musical sounds like hard work, Jason Coleman insists that it is all worth it in the end. “The great thing about theatre is that it gets into your body’s memory and reflex takes over, so you can really commit yourself to giving your whole self to the audience. It’s a fantastic thing to do, to turn up at work every day and to give other people joy.”
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”
Grace Sarah Lee Edwards
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For more information on Mary Poppins, visit www.disney.com.au/marypoppins
For more information on West Side Story, visit www.westsidestorythemusical.com.au
For more information on Hairspray, visit www.hairspraythemusical.com.au
