Dusty: The Original Pop Diva -(some PSB content)

[Naughty Zoot]

Australia seems to be a hotbed of PSB related projects of late. And, like our Boys, I'm quite smitten with Dusty, so I thought I'd post this.

Wishing, hoping for a hit
Tamsin Carroll as Dusty Springfield.

Dusty Springfield's life is the stuff of grand theatre: immense highs, crashing lows, glamour, tragedy. So will it work on stage? Simon Castles reports.

Backstage, the mood is wired as actors flit and flirt. A preview show of Dusty: The Original Pop Diva is two hours away. "Musicals are like childbirth," one actor hoots. "If you remembered how hard it all is you would never do it again!"

But inside Tamsin Carroll's dressing room, all is calm. And sparse. Carroll is applying make-up, and behind her is a clothes rack on which hangs a solitary dress. One dress? For the woman playing Dusty Springfield? The pop diva and gay icon with the blonde beehive, panda eyes, enormous eyelashes and frosty pink lipstick? One dress?

"There's a costume change every scene, sometimes mid-scene," Carroll says with a laugh when quizzed. Her dressing room is so empty because her role is so full. Carroll, a rising star of Australian musical theatre, sings 24 songs and changes costume 30 times. She's too much in the spotlight to make it back to her dressing room to change. The frocks hang stage left and right, like ghostly apparitions of Dusty Springfield looking on.

Vicki Wickham, Dusty's friend for 40 years and her manager in the latter half of her career, thinks Dusty would have approved. Wickham is a consultant on the show. It was to her that co-writer John-Michael Howson and producer Dennis Smith took a draft of the musical in 2001. "And she hated it," says Howson. "She said, 'You haven't nailed Dusty at all'. But she was very interested in what we were doing."

And so Howson and the creative team behind the hugely successful Johnny O'Keefe musical Shout! went back to work on the script - and on getting backers. Four years and 14 drafts later, everyone is happy. "It's a great story," says Howson. "It's the rise and fall and rise again. You can't beat that."

Dusty was born Mary O'Brien in London in 1939, a plumpish brunette considered plain by her middle-class Catholic family. But she had a singular voice and a drive for fame. With her brother she formed a folk group. Searching for a band name, they thumbed through a list of US towns. There were Springfields everywhere and so the Springfields were born, and so was Dusty. Out came the peroxide.

The band was a hit, but eventually split, and by 1963 Dusty was out on her own. Her first solo single, I Only Want to Be with You, topped the charts, and a string of hits followed: Son of a Preacher Man, Wishin' and Hopin', You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. Springfield was labelled the "white queen of soul".

"She had a voice like no other. It's instantly recognisable, and so musical," says Carroll, the 26-year-old who has also starred on stage in Grease and Oliver! "I think she had a vulnerability about her that people really connected with and loved dearly about her."

Not least the gay community, which embraced Dusty as one of their own. Dusty, a lesbian herself, would often go to Dusty drag shows; she was reputedly amused and dispirited in equal measure, as she often felt the drag acts looked better than she did. "She had no confidence," says Howson. "It all comes from her family background. They kept saying, 'You'll never be anything'. She carried that right through her adulthood."

It was Dusty's low self-esteem that would lend her career as many downs as ups. When she finally achieved the fame she craved, she couldn't handle it. She was a perfectionist, forever stuck with that trait's dreadful corollary - the feeling that nothing was ever good enough. That she wasn't good enough.

As disco arrived in the '70s and her star faded, Dusty sank into depression. She self-medicated with the usual suspects, mostly alcohol. She repeatedly cut her arms (she joked that she knew the paramedics by their first names). By the mid-'80s she was in a mental institution, straitjacketed. But this wasn't the end. Dusty's life, in true showbiz style, would give any future tribute show its obligatory upbeat finale. "If she had died a drunk in LA, no story," admits Howson, who is now based in Melbourne after many years in Tinseltown.

In the late-'80s, popular electro-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys asked Dusty to collaborate with them on several songs. Together they enjoyed a massive hit with What Have I Done to Deserve This? (a question Dusty may well have asked). At age 50, Springfield was hot again. Quentin Tarantino used one of her songs in Pulp Fiction. According to Wickham, Dusty was happier in the last years of her life - she died of cancer in 1999 - than she had ever been.

Whether Dusty is a hit remains to be seen, but Howson is struck by the size and fervency of Dusty's fan base. "The fans have kept the torch burning. She hasn't been forgotten."

Dusty: The Original Pop Diva is at the State Theatre until March 12. Tel: 1300 136 166

[Trixiemix]

Such greatness .......and Tragedy. I remember sitting in my back garden back in the 80's with a friend, and us both singing along with the radio playing 'What have I done to deserve this. This sounds like a Fab show.

[glennjridge]

I cant believe neil said she recorded songs syllable by syllable. that must have been slow torture on the studio engineer.

[Decisional]

I cant believe neil said she recorded songs syllable by syllable. that must have been slow torture on the studio engineer.

"All right, Dusty, I see here the next word is "unanimously" - GUYS! Break for lunch now - we'll be back in a couple of hours. Just use the red button to record there, Dust, 'key?"

[psb-freak]

Dusty wasn´t a lesbian actually. She was rather more bi.

[Naughty Zoot]

Here's a rather nice review I found from The Herald Sun:

Dusty's a tearful, soulful diva-delight
Alison Barclay and Simon Plant
13jan06

HAD Dusty Springfield looked down from soul heaven on Melbourne last night, that prima donna of self-doubt might have asked: What Have I Done To Deserve This?

The world premiere of Dusty: The Original Pop Diva – a $6 million musical heaving with hits and hairdos – was a grand tribute to the modest girl who never really believed she was the greatest white soul singer.
Dusty is a jukebox musical. Every song, from I Only Want To Be With You to the final lament of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, is a well-tested winner.

But this is no frivolous frolic and has no happy ending. If you are feeling at all fragile, Dusty will probably make you cry.

In this brief telling of the Springfield story, nothing is spared.

We endure Mary O'Brien's puberty blues and the confusion of young Dusty the timid bisexual, the good Catholic girl who thinks a cup of tea can cure all ills but who then hits the bottle with such ferocity her career free-falls for more than a decade.

The '70s scenes, in which Dusty becomes fodder for drag queens and suffers the ignominy of AA, are heartbreaking.

The woman responsible for this dizzying three-hour spin is the astounding Tamsin Carroll. Just 26, the former Grease star owns Dusty as if that platinum blonde's ghost were guiding her.

She evokes the voice that Petula Clark said was "impossible to imitate", nailing the plummy North London accent and, most poignantly, the vulnerability that was never far from the diva's surface.

Oh, and she keeps her perfect beehive.

Australia's best music theatre performers backed her.

Mitchell Butel was a stand-out as Rodney, Dusty's most loyal friend.

Just as Dusty's decline became too much to bear, Butel seized comedy from tragedy with a riotous send-up – with appropriate wigs – of Shirley Bassey, Cilla Black, Lulu and other rivals for Dusty's crown.

Alexis Fishman was a terrific Mary (young Dusty), her voice blending beautifully with Carroll's.

Even before its official opening, Dusty's box office earnings were close to $3 million in Melbourne and Sydney.

The show feels well-honed and solid.

Given such a tremendous opening night – before a capacity crowd including Bert and Patti Newton, Peter Costello, Seekers stars Judith Durham and Athol Guy, Kath & Kim's Gina Riley and SeaChange's Sigrid Thornton – Dusty is poised to be the No 1 musical of 2006 and possibly the next Australian blockbuster to leave our shores.

Dusty is at the State Theatre, Arts Centre, until March.

Tickets at 1300 136 166.

A full review of Dusty: The Original Pop Diva will appear in Monday's Entertainment.

[Naughty Zoot]

Apparently, there's also a companion CD released in OZ for the show. It's NOT the Original Cast but rather Dusty's original songs used in the show - including What have I done to deserve this?.
I wish I could confirm that Chris & Neil's characters appear in the show or even that What ... is performed in the show, but I'm half a world way.

Can't one of you Aussies be deputized as an Honorary Agent & go see the show ?

[Docoboy]

Can't one of you Aussies be deputized as an Honorary Agent & go see the show ?

I have my tickets booked for when the show comes to Sydney at the end of March... but surely there must be a Melbourne community member planning to see it before then?

[Rusty]

I haven't got tickets yet but I definitely plan on seeing this when it comes to Sydney. It got a rather luke warm review in the Melbourne Age yesterday, stating that the show would succeed despite its flaws largely due to the performance of the lead actress playing Dusty. Sadly, no mention was made of PSB in the review.