The legacy of Peter Allen, one of Australia’s finest showmen, lives on in the Brisbane Arts Theatre production of his life story, ‘The Boy From Oz’.
Taking on the lead role of Peter Allen is Brisbane actor Will Toft, who says it was a challenge to appropriately portray the cultural icon as both larger-than-life on-stage persona, and as a real person with whom the audience can relate.
“Typically as an actor you play a character, but Peter Allen was a person,” Will says. “So although you’ve got all the video and you can see him, you’ve got to try and portray him as best as you can.
“Because the writers obviously interpreted Peter Allen’s life and put it to a script, and as an actor I’m coming along to interpret what they’ve interpreted to give the audience the most real thing that they can possibly get in a performance like this.”Will says this role is a world away from his previous one, giving life and voice to the adorable puppet Princeton, lead character in the hilarious musical ‘Avenue Q’ which closed BAT's 2015 season.
“It’s been tough,” Will says of the transition from Princeton to Peter. “For ‘Avenue Q’, because it was puppetry a lot of the work was getting used to the puppets and making that as human as you possibly could. Because you had the puppets, in theory you were hidden behind because everyone’s looking at them but in ‘The Boy From Oz’, I’m it.“You’re looking for Peter Allen the showman; he was one of the greats in my opinion and learning everything it is to be a showman is totally different to being a puppeteer. I’ve definitely enjoyed just learning about the big showmen around the world at the moment and his time as well.”
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Like many Australians, as a child Will was familiar with Peter Allen through the enormous popularity of songs such as ‘Tenterfield Saddler’, ‘I Go To Rio’ and ‘I Still Call Australia Home’. To fully prepare for the role, Will had to dig a lot deeper into the entertainer’s life beyond the stage.
“I’d known Peter Allen’s music through dad, so I’d grown up with hearing ‘Tenterfield Saddler’ and things like that but never really knowing a lot about Peter Allen. I’ve looked into [Al] Jolson and Fred Astaire and all the things that influenced Peter Allen’s life, so his time and era.
“Obviously I’ve been checking out Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, and who was performing at that time had a huge impact on what Peter Allen was doing, even though he was very different and out there for his time.”‘The Boy From Oz’ is best-known as a full-scale Broadway production with lavish song and dance numbers, and although BAT presents a much smaller performance space, Will assures the show retains all the glamour and grandeur of the original.
“The Brisbane Arts Theatre is a lot smaller than other spaces and because the show goes back and forwards between in-concert as Peter Allen – talking to the audience, doing all the banter that he does and singing to them – and flashbacks, it allows for a lot more intimacy I’ve found.“The lights are brilliant, the colours are beautiful; the costumes you can see them up close and personal, and you can see every detail of what we’re wearing and what we’re doing. Although it’s a smaller space and there are less people on stage, it’s still got everything that ‘The Boy From Oz’ on Broadway would have had, just in a smaller space.”
‘The Boy From Oz’ performs Brisbane Arts Theatre 5 March - 23 April.
