David Campbell is most familiar as a performer, whether in musical theatre or in concert. But for the Hayes Theatre Company's production of Sweet Charity, he didn't play the lead.
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"I don't have the legs," he quips.
Instead, he was one of the producers, along with wife Lisa, through their company, Luckiest Productions.
"My wife chose it," he says when asked why the company revived the 1966 Broadway musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and book by Neil Simon, based on the Federico Fellini movie Nights Of Cabiria.
It was a shrewd choice. Sweet Charity, which opened the Hayes Theatre in Sydney, was a huge success last year.
The small size of the theatre, while enabling the show to be intimate, also meant not many people could see it. But the modest scale of the production - 12 cast members, four musicians and a few crew - made it suitable for touring.
It was revived this year and after a season at the Sydney Opera House is touring to Melbourne, Wollongong and Canberra.
Most of the original production team was reassembled including Helpmann Award winners Dean Bryant (best direction of a musical) and Andrew Hallsworth (best choreography in a musical).
Emerging star Samantha Leigh Dodemaide, winner of the Rob Guest Endowment, takes the role of Charity for the Wollongong season, replacing Verity Hunt-Ballard, who won the Helpmann Award for best female actor in a musical.
Sweet Charity tells the story of Charity Hope Valentine (Dodemaide), a dancer in a sleazy dance hall who dreams of finding love - and has dealings with three men, all played by Martin Crewes.
The score includes Big Spender, The Rhythm of Life and If They Could See Me Now.
While the original US production was directed and choreographed by the highly influential Bob Fosse, Campbell says that rather than opting for Broadway-style glitz and glamour, this production turned to the original Fellini movie for inspiration to create an earthier, pared-down interpretation.
Although the move to larger venues has necessitated some rethinking of the production, the essential approach is the same, aiming for realism and intimacy.
Sweet Charity is a story about the human spirit with Charity being the eternal optimist and battler, struggling against the odds.
With no qualifications, she's stuck using her body to make money and reliant on the slim chance of marriage to escape.
The men do not come out of Sweet Charity particularly well. With Crewes playing the three male leads - a sleazy opportunist, a self-obsessed actor and a neurotic, damaged man - it emphasises the point that Charity is repeating patterns in her life she seems unable to escape.
- Sweet Charity
- Illawarra Performing Arts Centre
- March 11 to 15
- Bookings here