Come to Brisbane Powerhouse, we'll get together and have a few laughs when Act/React present the low-fi, high camp 'Die Hard: The Movie, The Play'. Yippee-ki-yay, theatre-lovers!
Having already produced side-splitting shenanigans in 'Speed: The Movie, The Play' and 'Titanic: The Movie, The Play', Act/React will put an audience member into the blood-splattered, bare feet of the immortal Detective John McClane to defend Nakatomi Plaza from the hands of German terrorist Hans Gruber.“In 'Speed', Sandra [Bullock] was played by an audience member and we had people jump up for minor roles, and then for 'Titanic' we managed to get six different people to play Rose,” Act/React's Dan Beeston (Director) says.
“In 'Die Hard', we're picking an audience member at the very beginning and they're going to be the star the entire way through.”
Armed with little more than a singlet, a handful of pithy one-liners and the dad from 'Family Matters' as backup, Detective John McClane is the action hero we deserve and all wish we could be. . . And now we can.
“[John McClane] is the perfect character for something like this, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well, he just wasn't supposed to be there. So every night we're going to have a different person who is in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dan says.
With an audience member as John McClane, the role of Nakatomi Plaza will be played by the Turbine Platform, with the cast and crew taking advantage of its multi-level setup to represent the different floors of a skyscraper.
For the show format to work properly and provide seamless transition between scenes, Dan says it's best when the scope of the action can be limited and contained with a single space, making 'Die Hard' the perfect candidate for a 'The Movie, The Play' makeover.
“Something like 'True Lies' would be a bit of a mess because there's so much story happening over a huge area,” he explains.
“But if you can confine most of the action to a single bus or to a single boat, or in this case a single building, you've got a much better job of making the whole thing feel immersive. You're not breaking the realism by going 'hey, now we're in a field, now we're on a cliff, now we're on the ground'.”
Just like when Gruber's goons tried to get rid of McClane, Dan may be biting off more than he can chew by inviting a random audience member on stage.
“The thing is, people love John McClane,” he says.
“Initially when we did 'Speed' we wondered how much performance we'd get out of the audience – they're not trained, they're not going to step up like a trained actor is going to do. Then when we did 'Titanic' we had people who had memorised the entire film – they were ready to go and you could not stop them.
“We thought 'is there something that men like as much as women like 'Titanic'?', and that is 'Die Hard'. As soon as we get one of these guys in a singlet and put a holster on him, they are going to go for broke. I expect to have to rein them in more than pump them up.”
Just keep them out of the air vents, Dan. For all our sakes.
