Transcript
SHOWS Ringwald savours jazz role
Theatre Macbeth, Gold Coast Little Theatre, Southport: Stuart Lumsden directs this season of the William Shakespeare play – with a twist. Also stars Tara Page as Lady Macbeth, Jimmy Odenbreit as Banquo, James Anderson as Macduff, Patrick Monteath as Malcolm, Hugh Brophy as Duncan, Noel Thompson as Ross and Jack Harbour as Lennox. Plays Thursdays to Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm until May 11. Call 5532 2096 or visit gclt.com.au to book.
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OLLY Ringwald has moved from The Breakfast Club to the jazz club. The actress, who describes herself as ‘‘your former teenage crush’’ in her Twitter bio, lives in her generation’s memories for portraying the angst of high school life as an everyday girl, teen princess and outsider in iconic 1980s films Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink with writer-director John Hughes. Now the 45-year-old has taken on a new role as a jazz singer with the release of her album Except Sometimes, a collection of Great American Songbook and Broadway tunes, and an Australian tour. Ringwald sings about romance from a mature, adult perspective, interpreting such tunes as I Get Along Without You Very Well and The Very Thought of You. She also pays tribute to the late Hughes by reclaiming Don’t You (Forget About Me), the Simple Minds’ theme to The Breakfast Club, turning it into a jazz ballad. She believes her acting experience has helped enhance her jazz singing. ‘‘As an actor you pay attention to the words and you get into character. I tend to do this with music as well. I really get into the lyric,’’ she says. She will perform limited engagements at jazz clubs across the country, allowing enough breaks to spend time at home with her three children and husband, writereditor Panio Gianopoulos. Ringwald’s jazz roots run deep. Her father, blind pianist Bob Ringwald, plays traditional Dixieland jazz. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of female jazz singers – reeling off the names of those who most influenced her: Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day, Blossom Dearie and Susannah McCorkle. She considers jazz her ‘‘musical equivalent of comfort food’’. Her parents encouraged her to pursue interests other than acting – singing, writing, reading and travelling – which kept her engaged in a world outside Hollywood and its club scene, avoiding the pitfalls that ensnared some of her teen co-stars. ‘‘I hear jazz and it just feels good because it reminds me of my childhood,’’ Ringwald says on the phone from Los Angeles. ‘‘I started singing with my dad when I was three years old and really developed a close relationship with him through music that endures to this day.’’ Ringwald would sit in with her father’s Sacramento-based Fulton Street Jazz Band singing Fats Waller and Bessie Smith songs. She recorded her first jazz album, I Wanna Be Loved By You, Molly Sings with her father’s band at age six and originally wanted to be a singer, making her professional debut at age 10 in a West Coast production of Annie. But after landing her first TV and film
Hats! – The Musical, Basement Theatre, Spotlight, Benowa: Last days! A laugh-loaded musical celebration of women aged 50-plus starring Kirri Adams, Sheila Bradley, Martina French, Cherie Goosey, Katrina Lardner, Kate Peters and Linda Van Vierson. Directed by Tony Alcock. Plays tonight until Saturday at 7.30pm and Sunday at 4pm. Tickets $15 to $25. Visit spotlighttheatre.com.au or call 5539 4255 to book.
Actress, dancer and singer Molly Ringwald rediscovers her jazz roots, writes Charles J Gans
roles, she decided to focus on acting – a choice she says she wouldn’t have to make as a teen actor today given the popularity of Glee and High School Musical. ‘‘When I started acting, it didn’t seem that there were any actors that were also singing. I really felt to be taken seriously as an actress, I would have to just give up the idea of having a musical career.’’ But she never stopped singing, mostly performing with her father’s band. She briefly sang the standard Embraceable You in the teen pregnancy film For Keeps. After spending much of the 1990s in Paris, Ringwald relocated to New York to do theatre, including the lead roles in revivals of the musicals Cabaret and Sweet Charity. In 2005, while starring in the offBroadway comedy Modern Orthodox, she was inspired to sing jazz when she met her ‘‘perfect collaborator’’ at a cast party. Peter Smith, an understudy, had just begun playing jazz tunes on the piano when Ringwald started singing along with him. ‘‘I grew up like everyone else watching her in movies and just thought that the only kind of music she’s going to know is like The Smiths and The Cure, all that ’80s music,’’ Smith says. ‘‘But she really knew how to sing jazz.’’ Smith was impressed by the quality and tone of her voice and most of all by her
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‘‘tasteful artistic choices as a singer’’. He invited her to sit in at his jazz club gigs before he left for Los Angeles. Ringwald reunited with Smith when she moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to join the cast of TV show The Secret Life of the American Teenager, playing the mother of a pregnant teenager. She eventually felt confident enough to record an album in 2010 with Smith writing the arrangements. Ringwald felt the time was right because the music that she always enjoyed singing had become more popular thanks to Diana Krall, Jane Monheit and Norah Jones. The album’s release was delayed because Ringwald had her hands full raising her twins (now 3 1/2 years old) and pursuing a literary career. In 2010, she published Getting the Pretty Back, which offered personal anecdotes and advice, and her first novel When It Happens To You last year. Ringwald is already looking ahead to recording another jazz album and is developing her own TV show. ‘‘I feel that I have grown as a person and as an artist and am able to take on more things at once,’’ she says. 䉴 The Gold Coast Jazz and Blues Club presents Molly Ringwald at The Arts Centre Gold Coast on June 22. Tickets are $99.50 dinner and show.
Any Number Can Die, The Centre, Beaudesert: Last days! BAMS Theatre presents writer Fred Carmichael’s satirical comedy thriller about a group gathered for a will reading. Directed by Joan StalkerBrown. Plays tomorrow and Saturday at 7.30pm. Tickets $16.50 to $23.50. Visit liveatthecentre.com.au to book. Transfusion, Dracula’s, Broadbeach: Cabaret restaurant’s latest vampire variety melds acerbic comedy, burlesque and circus. Stars Richard Macionis and Big Brother’s Charne. Dinner/show Tuesdays to Saturdays. Arrivals from 6.30pm. Spirit of the Horse, Australian Outback Spectacular, Oxenford: A dinner and show spectacle with a cast of larger-than-life characters, incredible stunts, special effects, live music in the Aussie Bar and a threecourse meal. Outback Spectacular celebrates its 2000th show this week. Plays Tuesdays to Saturdays, with matinees on the last Sunday of each month. Doors open 6.15pm. Tickets from $79.99.
䉴 What’s On, Pages 30-31
