Written specifically to showcase the extraordinary talents of BERNADETTE ROBINSON, Songs For Nobodies is a 90-minute play featuring songs from five iconic divas: Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas, as each of them come into the lives of five ‘nobodies’.
Bernadette takes on the divas in her one-woman show as she performs on the West End stage for the first time. Her critically-acclaimed performances have been revived several times to sell-out seasons.
Songs For Nobodies opens at the Ambassadors Theatre this week and runs until 23 February 2019.
Here Bernadette is in conversation with Musical Theatre Review’s Tal Fox.
How did the idea for the show come about?
I was the one that instigated it from the beginning because I really wanted to do something with the Melbourne Theatre Company. I’m predominately a singer in Australia but I wanted to do something more than that and I approached Simon Phillips who is the artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company.
He was trying to work out how to put me into a play or show and I suggested playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. I think she’s great and eventually she came around to the idea and Simon came around to the idea and I said I’d really love it to be a series of monologues with five different great singers who are all from different genres, Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday.
Joanna then went away with that and came back with making it about five nobodies rather than being about the singers, it was more about these five women from different walks of life and nationalities and periods, and in some way their lives are affected or they have a brush with one of these great singers and it’s really their stories. They’re all quite different stories and different people.
Why particularly these women?
I’m a singer but I also like to evoke some of those great singers because I’ve grown up listening to so many of them. I just thought it would make it really interesting to choose different sorts of singers. I love all of them, they’re all so great and have such different styles.
Did you fit the stories around the songs or vice versa?
It was completely up to Joanna. All I insisted on was those singers, and I had pretty much the run of what songs would be in it. It really is a play, it’s five monologues with songs from those singers, and I play the singers and the women and the various other characters that come into the story.
There’s an English woman whose father was a French prisoner of war and through circumstances that come out in the story, he was rescued by Edith Piaf. So that one is about Piaf as well as an English librarian, and that’s how they all are. There’s the Irish girl who works on the Onassis’ yacht and meets Maria Callas during the whole unfolding of their marriage breakdown. I found it very interesting and also funny and exciting.
There’s Patsy Cline’s understudy who isn’t really an understudy, she’s an usher, but she gets to go up and sing with Patsy when she comes to the concert and it’s the night that Patsy Cline was killed in a plane crash when she went home, so all that comes into the story. So they’re all very different characters.
It’s a one-woman show, how does that work in this context?
I just become them. It’s a very simple set and I have just one costume on and a black jacket that’s got a very 50s period look to it. Bea Appleton is the first one, she is the room attendant at the Plaza Hotel and she’s working there and talking about her husband who left her. That was the night that Judy Garland sang at Carnegie Hall and she happens to come in. I play both of them talking to each other and then Judy sings ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’.
That’s sort of the first time we hear any singing and the band emerge and it’s a big number so it’s exciting because it’s very small at the beginning. Then there’s a moment where we blackout and then I’m just sitting on a chair singing backing vocals and that becomes the Patsy exchange.
What’s your favourite moment from the show?
There’s a couple I really love in the Edith Piaf bit where she talks about visiting the Edith Piaf museum every other year on her birthday and then it goes into, ‘Non, Je Regrette Rien’ and it just works really well. At the end with Maria Callas where she thought she had a chance for a moment, and then she starts singing, is quite a powerful moment too.
Which part was the hardest to capture?
It’s really hard to do after that enormous blast of ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ because I do just all out Judy and she’s all over the stage and then I have to completely shrink down and have a controlled voice into the next segment which involves singing backing vocals at a radio station.
Just after that enormous number to suddenly get quiet and composed, I find that very hard to do. There’s a lot of monologues and a lot of action. The director has given me plenty of props too! I suppose I’m more comfortable when I’m actually singing but it’s great. It’s a great show and people have always loved it and I’ve always loved it. I’ve done a few one-woman shows and this one is my favourite.
What made you decide to bring it to London?
We thought it was the next step really. It’s done so well in Australia and it ran on and off for a few years. There were people in Australia who really believed in me and said the show should be seen elsewhere. So we did a little trial for two weeks at the Wilton’s Music Hall at the beginning of last year now and it went really well, so we thought let’s give it a whirl. So the theatre came up and everything seemed right. It’s quite a small theatre which is great for what I do so I’m very happy.
Is this your first time performing in the West End?
Yes, it’s certainly a big step for me.
What are you most looking forward to about being in the West End?
All the history it has and all the wonderful shows and plays and all the people who have performed in it before. It’s just always had that glamorous, wondrous air to it. Performing in the West End, you’ve made it, babe! Especially for Australians, because we know Shaftesbury Avenue and all the different roads and places and it’s really just exciting.
What is the most interesting thing you’ve learnt about the women?
Only that they are just the masters of what they do, but I guess that’s what we want to present in a way. Most of them had pretty sad lives, but that doesn’t really come into it really. It’s really about the other women. It is more about how Jo has presented them and their relationship with the world and the women that they talk to, so it’s just a slice of them really. It’s mainly the music they perform.
When did you learn that you had this knack for impressions?
I could always sing, even before I could speak apparently, and then because we went to shows or got the albums and I would just sing along and other people or family would say: “You really sound like Julie Andrews…” But I didn’t really understand, I was just singing along.
Sometimes singers have a particular something, I just latch onto it and capture that. And then I realised I could sound like these singers that I loved, so that’s why I wanted to perform their work. I actually studied opera in college so that’s why I wanted to bring Maria Callas into it to have the operatic as well as all the other styles. It just gives the show a really nice finish.
What is your favourite impression to do?
I do love the Piaf, I always find her very emotional. I probably would say her, she’s been the most popular.
Is there someone you’d still like to perform as?
It’s interesting because I’m sort of doing much more of my own stuff and bringing in my own voice, so I mix it up with me singing my own interpretations of great songwriters and then also have some fun with people like Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand. I pop those in there, so I guess I do all sorts, but I don’t really have a favourite singer, it’s hard.
What can audiences expect from this show?
They can expect to be absolutely drawn in and immersed into such a gorgeous story of these amazing little people and then have the bonus of the songs and the great singers that they come across, so it’s quite moving at times and funny and interesting and warm.
Who should come to see it?
Pretty much everyone, but I suppose anyone who likes any of those singers of course. It’s a beautifully crafted piece so I think anyone who wants to have an escape for an hour and a half. It’s just a beautiful piece, but anyone who loves any of those singers will love it too. Or any music.
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