Oh Beehive!


Belting it out: Tamsin Carroll as Dusty Springfield during a sneak preview
before the world premiere of Dusty: The Original Pop Diva yesterday.

Paul Flanagan and Corinne Day call themselves Dusty wranglers. Actor Tamsin Carroll, who plays soul singer Dusty Springfield in a new $6 million musical, wears 30 different outfits and 11 wigs during the 160-minute show.

To paraphrase a Springfield hit, if it weren't for Flanagan, who is her dresser, and Day, her wig and make-up artist, Carroll would "just not know what to do with herself".

Dusty: The Original Pop Diva, had its world premiere at Melbourne's State Theatre last night, attended by Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, acting Premier John Thwaites and '60s music stars including Judith Durham, Athol Guy, Judy Stone and Jim Keays. Its six-week season kicks off a national tour ending in Brisbane in October.

For eight performances a week, at the end of each song, and sometimes mid-song, Dusty must don fresh duds. Flanagan and Day attend to Carroll in changing cubicles either side of the stage - replacing false eyelashes; applying hairspray; ripping off a 1960s dress here, helping Carroll into a 1970s jumpsuit there.


Tamsin Carroll as Dusty Springfield.

"It's funny, when you read the script, you see how many costume changes there are and you think it'll never be possible," said Carroll, after a media peek at three Dusty numbers yesterday. Theoretically, a snagged sequin could stop the show cold. But Carroll raps a fist on her head vigorously. "We'll just touch as much wood as we possibly can."

Yesterday, Carroll wore a lace-encrusted white gown and blonde beehive to perform "Son of a Preacher Man," in a scene recreating the 1969 New York launch of the Dusty in Memphis album. Carroll also sang the show's opening song, "I Only Want to Be With You," wearing a white jumpsuit and Farrah Fawcett hairdo of the late 1970s, in a scene set at the Royal Albert Hall Royal Command Performance, that became one of Springfield's major career comebacks.

Carroll, 26, gets to sing songs whose titles have become household phrases such as "I Only Want To Be With You," and "Wishin' and Hopin'." But she says another reason to see the musical is the life story of "this celebrity icon, this particular-looking and sounding woman" whom she portrays from shy 19-year-old Londoner Mary O'Brien, to death as a 59-year-old showbiz veteran.

"I think that she was not so much a diva but was really just fighting for being a female in the '60s in the pop industry," says Carroll. "Trying to fight for her own creative voice. So she was kind of a pioneer for us singers now."

The musical's writers, John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow, finished their first script four years ago and there have since been 15 drafts.

Carolyn Webb
The Age
January 13, 2006
(Top photo: Angela Wylie)


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