Article: New Zealand Herald, Sunday 22nd March, 2009

Enter a fair dinkum gent

4:00AM Sunday Mar 22, 2009
Sarah Lang

My Fair Lady. Photo / Supplied

For the third time this morning, William McInnes' laugh has metamorphosed into a snort. "I always do that when I giggle too much, it's terrible." He grins.

The salt-of-the-earth Aussie actor is in the thick of Sydneyside rehearsals for the Auckland season of My Fair Lady, which opens at The Civic on Wednesday.

My Fair Lady - the adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's epic play Pygmalion - has been one of the world's favourite musicals for more than 50 years, since its first Broadway season in 1956 broke all box-office records.

Transporting audiences to the heart of Edwardian London, it follows the fortunes of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who takes speech lessons from phonetics professor Henry Higgins so she can pass as a refined lady. Transforming the feisty street urchin to honour a bet, pompous Henry takes credit for Eliza's makeover. But does she need him, or does he need her?

My Fair Lady is a satirical, urbane comedy with plenty of verbal jousting and some thought-provoking themes: about belief in yourself, how (not) to judge people, and friction between the sexes. The wealth of witticisms lend it the air of a theatrepiece and the show-stopping songs (Wouldn't It Be Loverly, With a Little Bit of Luck, The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night, On the Street Where You Live, Get Me To The Church on Time and I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face) blend in seamlessly, enriching rather than jarring the story.

Although this incarnation ofMy Fair Lady brings lavish sets and a fashion parade of costumes from last year's sell-out Australian tour, there's been no resting on laurels here. Opera Australia star soprano Taryn Fiebig stays on as Eliza, but there's new blood in the form of New Zealand's grande dame of acting, Ilona Rodgers (as Henry's acerbic mother Mrs Higgins), globe-touring actor/singer/cabaret artist Hayden Tee (as impoverished aristocrat Freddy), and McInnes as the irascible professor Henry Higgins. It's the accomplished actor's first musical after many roles in theatre, film and TV (Blue Heelers, Seachange).

A new protagonist keeps the production interesting for Stuart Maunder, a veteran director of opera, musicals and concerts. Henry's are hard boots to fill, Maunder says, given the self-absorbed misogynist has been played by some of the world's acting greats; most recently in Sydney by Richard E. Grant. "William brings a very different feel. I think he's a bit more of a mimic than the other boys were. There's a wickedness about him, a delight in playing with Eliza. Which, in turn, makes her more feisty."

Maunder is speaking from the bowels of historic Australia Hall, with its faded grandeur of embellished ceilings and friezes. Giant black drapes block all natural light, props are minimal, and lines drawn on the floor mark the boundaries of The Civic's space, so the actors will know if they "fall" off the stage into the orchestra pit.

When I'm there, "onstage" rehearsals are restricted to just the two protagonists and assistant director/choreographer Elizabeth Hill, who is reading lines for the other parts and prompting or correcting McInnes. Once McInnes is sure enough of his footing and his lines, other cast members will be added, building up to full-cast rehearsals. "I'm the slow new boy," McInnes says after fluffing a line. It's a little startling to hear the highfalutin Btritish toff accent suddenly revert to an Australian drawl.

Yet the quintessential laidback Aussie bloke looks anything but stressed. When he slips up, he more often than not cracks a joke or tells a "there-was-this-one-time" story. The laughter breaks the creative tension.

But the jokes don't mean he's slacking. "You can take your work seriously but you can't take yourself seriously, otherwise you disappear up your own arse," he says.

Whenever there's a short pause, McInnes bends over his script: making notes in the margins; reading his lines; practising different facial expressions, stances, tones of voice, movements and speeds. He's in his own little bubble until it's time to go again. Yes, the same scene. "That's it," comes a voice booming from the director's chair.

As Maunder looks on, his internal monologue sometimes spills over into speech, with asides such as "Oh, the grandeur of human language" tossed over his shoulder.

Although McInnes has done plenty of theatre, he says his first musical is a real challenge, especially since it is "a classic piece of musical theatre. It certainly clears out some cobwebs, that's for sure. "But I reckon you've just got to jump in and have a crack. It's good to give yourself a bit of a fright."

Although the waltz moves are fresh fodder ("I dance like an oil rig in heavy seas"), it's the singing, particularly the solos, which are the most daunting. "But you can't think too much about it or you trip over yourself."

Practising his solo I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face, McInnes shows off a strong voice, even if he seems slightly uncomfortable on the high notes. Still, when Fiebig breaks into song, it's obvious who is the singer who acts and who is the actor who sings. Had he sung before?

"Oh yeah, I've sung in the shower and in bars. I sang at my mother's birthday the other day with my sister and I sounded like a dying mule," he says. Maunder differs, saying McInnes' hitherto underused singing voice is very strong in its quality, range and pitch. "He can scream certain notes so they're very poignant. I wouldn't mind betting it won't be too long before this one ends up doing a real (more musical) musical."

So how did McInnes end up so far from his usual stamping ground?

It's all down to Maunder reading a magazine article mentioning that McInnes had always wanted to do a musical but couldn't sing.

"I'd liked him as an actor, but the feel of him has always been so Australian," says Maunder, who decided to ring McInnes anyway to see if he was at all interested in playing Henry for the Auckland season.

"He just said 'Yeah, all right mate', and I thought:' Oh my God, we're talking about the part of the quintessential English gent here."

But his nerves were soothed after a one-on-one fortnight in McInnes' hometown of Melbourne. "He is a chameleon and a master of acting," Maunder says.

Despite the patent pressure on him, McInnes who jokes he wants to "Australianise" the musical into My Fair Matey, isn't worried. "Yeah, she'll be right".

* My Fair Lady opens at Auckland's Civic Theatre, The Edge, on Wednesday for a limited season only.

Article: New Zealand Herald, Saturday 14th March, 2009

Fair Dinkum He's a Right Henry

by Linda Herrick

Professor Henry Higgins is on the line from Melbourne. In his lifelong dedication to the study of correct phonetics, he has never been more offended than by the strident screech of Cockney flowergirl Eliza Doolittle. In the words of the song Why Can't the English Learn to Speak? he thinks Eliza is "a prisoner of the gutter ... she should be taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue".

Then the good prof starts gargling to the tune of I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face ...

It's a little known fact that Australian actor William McInnes, who heads the cast of the musical My Fair Lady at the Civic from March 25, is a seasoned gargler. He may have won multiple Logie Awards for most outstanding actor in TV series such as SeaChange andBlue Heelers and best actor at the Australian Film Institute Awards for moviesLook Both Ways and Unfinished Sky, but he also has what he thought (until now) was a secret skill. At university, many years ago, he was in a group called the Musical Garglers.

"Oh man, where did you get that from?" he groans. "Unfortunately, that's true. You can see how I spent my university years - we spent too much time in the students' bar. We played anything you could gargle to. We actually got asked to perform at a wedding. We gargled with beer and stuff like that. I am a class act. I am going to be Henry Higgins in stubbies and thongs. Don't put that in!"

This is not McInnes' first musical. In Year 10 of school, he claims, he was in the chorus of The Pirates of Penzance, but got kicked out with "all the rugby boys because we were too rowdy". Surely he's had more adult musical experience since then? "Yeah, I think so," he drawls, "but I can't remember what it was called. But My Fair Ladyis a terrific piece," attending briefly to his publicity duties. "Anyone who knows it thinks fondly of it. There's every tune you can hum or gargle to. What do you want to hear?"

Thus I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face comes gurgling down the phone, McInnes style. The point of Henry Higgins, though, is that he speaks in a frightfully posh upper-class English accent. McInnes, who was born and bred in the coastal town of Redcliffe, east of Brisbane, does not.

"I'm doing it as a Queenslander and I'm gonna wear my old mouth guard, come on stage in an old rugby uniform and electrical tape around my ears and be the broken-down old fullback. They're gonna kill me if you put this in. Don't put it in!"

McInnes, 44, first saw the film of My Fair Lady when he was 10 at the local drive-in with his mother. It was a double bill, with The Sound of Music, "and so long we had to pitch up a tent and camp overnight", he quips. "My Fair Ladywas a cracking piece back then and Audrey Hepburn was a cracker."

The Redcliffe drive-in was important to young William. He has written about it in his best-selling childhood memoir A Man's Got to Have a Hobby. "I went there with a friend who had a golden Torana to see Alien," he recalls. "Everyone was engrossed in Alien but he just wanted to listen on the radio to the last couple of overs of this one-day international of Australia playing the West Indies so we watched the last minutes of Alien with the Australian cricket

commentators going crazy. At the end, he turned round and said, 'That was a bloody good movie. Whoi can't they make more loike it?' It was ridiculous."

McInnes laughs and adds: "I've got an American friend who says, 'You Queenslanders, you speak like a ventriloquist, you don't move your lips when you speak'."

So he does take an interest in phonetics, like Higgins? "That's one of the great things about Australians, you know? 'Why can't the New Zealanders speak clearly?' And you go, 'Yeah, well, have you just looked in the mirror?' It's a very funny thing, the Australian accent. You get two speeds - you either speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y or," sounding like a cartoon chipmunk, "like you're a helium race caller."

I think it's safe to say McInnes is not going to model himself on the Henry Higgins archetype established by Rex Harrison. "I guess everyone relates him to Henry but it doesn't mean you turn into a Rex Harrison tribute artist," he says. "It's not like an Elvis tribute artist. Now there's a thought! Elvis as Henry Higgins. 'Thank you very much' and have him come out in a jump suit."

Let's get a bit more serious here. Has he learned the lyrics yet to MFL's classic songs like You Did It, I'm an Ordinary Man, The Rain in Spain? "Glarg glarg glarg," is the response.

He adds, slightly more soberly, "I am going around the house singing and my kids are over it. I dropped my son off at the station - not too many 15-year-olds have to deal with walking over to a crowded rail station in their school blazer while their father is yelling out to them Why Can't the English Learn to Speak?"

McInnes says he thinks Higgins is "a weird character. It's almost like he's one of those people who become so attuned to some particular part of human existence that the rest of it falls away. I know he's such a misogynist, misanthropic sort of character but the warmth of the musical is how that gets stripped away and he realises he's quite a lonely man, which is moving."

McInnes has to finish now and go to rehearsals. "Look, if I could just seriously leave you with one thought though on our two nations' relationship, best described in these words." He gargles away. "You see - I'm a serious artist. Luckily there are professionals in the rest of the cast."

He signs off with a word I haven't heard since the last time I was in Oz. "Hooray!" Indeed. Hooray for Henry "Gargler" Higgins.

LOWDOWN

What: My Fair Lady
History: Based on the 1913 play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; music by Frederick Loewe. The plot involves Cockney flowergirl Eliza Doolittle who takes speech lessons from Professor Henry Higgins so she can pass herself off in London high society as a "lady". The pair reluctantly fall in love. First staged on Broadway in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, followed by a hit London season, and a film in 1964 starring Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, whose singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon. A remake starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Keira Knightley is scheduled to be made this year.
The new show: The stage version opens at the Civic on March 25 and runs until April 12. It stars William McInnes as Henry Higgins, Taryn Fiebig as Eliza, Ilona Rodgers as Henry's mother, and Rhys McConnochie as Colonel Pickering accompanied by a large ensemble cast and 33 members of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Bookings: Through the-edge.co.nz; tickets from $74.90

Auckland Readers: Win Tickets to see William in My Fair Lady

For our Kiwi friends only, you can win tickets to see William play Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, through www.eventfinder.co.nz 

Click here for information.

Article: TV Tonight, Thursday March 12th, 2009

Stories wanted to build Modern Australia

• By David Knox on March 12

• 
  
• 
  
• ABC is calling for people to share their personal stories online, with the possibility of incorporating the materil into a four-part documentary series The Making of Modern Australia (MOMA.

As both a broadband project and TV series, ABC is inviting individuals and families to log stories of life in Australia since 1945.

“The Making of Modern Australia allows everyone to be a part of history,” says series producer Ian Collie.

“They might be sad or funny stories, memories of big events, or just the quiet details of everyday life. We’re making a history of Australia told by the people who lived it,” Mr Collie said.

“The Making of Modern Australia provides a wonderful opportunity for families to get together and talk about their past and their family history. We’re hoping younger family members will record parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents, and then upload their films or audio files, as well as photos or written material,” he said.

People can upload their stories through photos, home movies, live webcams, sound recordings and text atwww.makingaustralia.com.au. William McInnes gives virtual guidance on the site.

Personal stories are being sought primarily in four broad categories:

* faith and religion
* parenting and childhood
* romance and relationships
* the Australian home/a sense of place

Stories will be showcased on the website as a lasting record for others to read and comment on. All material posted to the website will be considered for inclusion in the four-part landmark documentary series on ABC TV.

Article: The Australian, Wednesday 11th March, 2009

Your Story is History

AUSTRALIAN history has never been so popular. On Sunday night the ABC will screen part one of Rogue Nation, the colourful story of our early Colonial past.

But now the national broadcaster wants to tell a more recent story, the story of your lives.

A unique online and television project will see people posting their personal history through photos, home movies, live webcams, sound recordings and text to a dedicated website http://www.makingaustralia.com.au for possible inclusion in a television series.

Popular Australian actor William McInnes has written two memoirs about his life experiences and he has been recruited to walk the public through the process of story telling.

The ABC says The Making of Modern Australia (MOMA) will be an unofficial people’s history, with individuals and families sharing their stories of life in Australia since 1945. 

“The Making of Modern Australia allows everyone to be a part of history,” says series producer Ian Collie. 

“They might be sad or funny stories, memories of big events, or just the quiet details of everyday life. We’re making a history of Australia told by the people who lived it,” Collie says. 

“The Making of Modern Australia provides a wonderful opportunity for families to get together and talk about their past and their family history. We’re hoping younger family members will record parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents, and then upload their films or audio files, as well as photos or written material,” he said. 

People are being asked to frame their memories around four broad categories: 
faith and religion 
parenting and childhood 
romance and relationships 
the Australian home/a sense of place