‘She just conjured electricity': Celebrating Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett
Before Madonna talked sex and sexuality on stage, a working-class girl on the other side of the globe was shocking audiences with her fierce and powerful performances.
Chrissy Amphlett was unlike anything Australians had seen when she burst on the stage in 1980 as lead singer of Divinyls. Without her it's hard to imagine Amy Taylor from Amyl & the Sniffers, or Amphlett's fellow Geelong-born rocker Adalita.
A new show opening next week called Amplified showcases the work of the late artist – Amphlett died from breast cancer in 2013, aged just 53 – as well as her extraordinary impact and legacy.
Making the work has been a wonderful process, says Sheridan Harbridge, who stars in the show, and co-created it with acclaimed director Sarah Goodes and musical director Glenn Moorhouse (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).
Trawling through YouTube and watching old performances by the Divinyls and Amphlett solo, Harbridge says there are hundreds of comments from people writing things such as 'I saw them at the Crystal Ballroom and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen'.
'And then women saying, 'I'd never seen a woman act like that and I didn't know you could',' the actor-singer-writer says, adding that 'equally for men, they were watching something quite electric'.
'I spoke to someone who worked with her and they said, 'she just conjured electricity'.'
Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Gippsland, Harbridge wasn't allowed to watch shows like The Simpsons and The Golden Girls, but thankfully her mum didn't know what Rage was, so that was where she first came across Amphlett.
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Sydney Morning Herald
32 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘As an older woman, courage starts to wobble': How Marta Dusseldorp finds her strength
This story is part of the June 8 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. Walking through the rainforest in the remote west of her adopted Tasmanian home, actor Marta Dusseldorp finds beauty and brutality along the banks that are home to rare Huon pine. At one junction, the clear water of one river meets the yellow, soupy water of another, poisoned by copper mining tailings. 'It's just extraordinary, the confluence of man and nature,' says Sydney-born and raised Dusseldorp, 52, who, more than seven years ago, moved to the island state with actor-director husband Ben Winspear and their two daughters, Grace and Maggie. Dusseldorp has just completed shooting the second season of ABC TV comedy-drama Bay of Fires, which she co-created, co-produced and stars. Filming took place again in the well-preserved main street of the small Tasmanian town of Zeehan, known for silver mining. But this spot, where the King and Queen rivers meet, proved a more elusive location. 'I tried to film there, but it's really hard to get to, and the safety issues weren't going to quite work.' Surrounding mountains and valleys have nonetheless provided picturesque settings for the appealing Tassie-noir, to which Dusseldorp's picaresque character Anika fled with her two children after death threats were made against her in her former corporate life in Melbourne. Anika took on the alias Stella, and hid among a cohort of eccentric, protected witnesses: there is heroin being cooked, a religious cult that has arranged marriages, and an assassin waiting for the aliens to descend. The second season has capitalism and greed on its themes as the townsfolk pressure Stella for more payouts from her corporate scam, which has already netted them $3.4 million, and inflationary pressures have pushed the price of bread to $23 a loaf. New threats may yet force Stella into the drug trade with her old foe Frankie (Kerry Fox), presumed dead by all at the end of the first season. Like the twists in her show, life in the smallest Australian state has delivered what Dusseldorp did not predict: fertile, imaginative ground. While her husband was born in Wagga Wagga, he'd grown up in Hobart, and they both wanted their children to experience the Tasmanian lifestyle. But they did not know how long they would stay. The couple found a network of like-minded actors, writers and directors, and started their own production company, Archipelago. Tasmania is also home to mycelium, the underground network of fungi threads that shares water and nutrients between trees, and which Dusseldorp says is a metaphor for the artist-community connections she's found in the state. The culture here appears to stimulate both artistic growth and biodiversity. Living here, says Dusseldorp, 'stops the clutter and gives you focus. You can get a lot done in Tassie as connections are just one step away.' Today, Dusseldorp is wearing a fawn trench coat in the lobby of her Sydney hotel and drinking lemongrass tea with honey. Several years ago, life was more frenetic as she dominated television screens in three popular series: Janet King, A Place to Call Home and Jack Irish. As if the pressures of playing the lead in the first two shows were not enough, Dusseldorp would also carve out three months each year between TV seasons to do a theatre play, including War of the Roses, The Crucible, Scenes from a Marriage and A Doll's House, Part 2. Theatre became her 'weird' way of researching what the public was feeling, she reflects now, which helped her decide when she went back onto a TV set if she was playing her long-running screen characters 'too tough or not tough enough'. '[Audiences] come as these beasts, and they sit as one, like in a colosseum, and then turn on you,' she observes. 'If they don't like [the play] or whatever, you have to work out a way to re-engage them, unite them, and give them something to go home with; it's like being a conductor. You find out politically where people are at and what's funny, because it changes depending on the climate.' The Australian playwright Benedict Andrews said Dusseldorp is a 'very brave and captivating and muscular actress'. (She played the eponymous lead in his 2016 play Gloria.) 'Oh my god,' says Dusseldorp when I remind her of performing this role in Sydney's tiny 105-seat Stables Theatre. ' Gloria was a very particular beast. She was basically a cry from me about what it felt like to be in the spotlight. Benedict did a really great job of showing the internal shattering of Gloria as a mother and a partner, and what the costs are of [fame]. 'I didn't want to fully acknowledge [the costs of fame], and when I don't want to acknowledge something, I do a play about it, so I can be somebody else, live it out, and go, 'Got that out of my system!' I would often go home and fall in a heap, but it was done. Theatre is like severance: there it is, I did that, and I went through it, and now I'm OK.' Dusseldorp met Winspear in 2003 when they were working on separate Sydney Theatre Company productions. 'He was like a ship: solid, unique,' Dusseldorp told me in a 2013 interview. The attraction was such that she 'had to splash cold water on my face'. Since moving to Tasmania, Winspear has directed Dusseldorp in the plays The Bleeding Tree, The Maids and Women of Troy. What's her take on their relationship now? 'We still walk side by side, which I really love,' she says. 'And there's an intent to be the custodians of our daughters forever, and make sure we guide them as best we can. Our work together is sacred, so we try to make sure it's filled with honesty, mutual respect, care.' In 2013, when I visited the couple's home in Sydney's Edgecliff, Winspear was preparing the evening meal for Grace, then almost 6, and Maggie, 3. He said he was mindful of how acting and directing obligations can invert family life, so they resisted employing childcare. 'His love of his family is his north star,' says Dusseldorp now. 'It comes down to mutual respect in a long-term relationship, understanding that people have their own ways of doing things, and trying to learn from that.' Grace is now 18 and has left Tasmania to live in Sydney. A budding writer, she is studying English literature. 'She's written a TV series about the family, which I have not seen yet,' Dusseldorp laughs, 'and I have the right to vet, I've told her! Sometimes when we have a family situation, I see her jotting things down and I'm like, 'What is that?'.' Maggie, now 15, and like her sister was often on the set of her mother's shows. 'My kids feel very comfortable socially with adults because they've always been around them.' Dusseldorp is mindful that with privilege comes responsibility. She is producing a film with a domestic-violence theme that is yet to go into production. She is also on the board of the Sydney-based charity, the Dusseldorp Forum, formed in 1989 by her late paternal grandfather, Dick Dusseldorp, founder of construction giant Lend Lease. The forum aims to improve education, health and social outcomes for children and their families through community-led projects. After our interview, Dusseldorp is going to visit her sister Teya, who is the forum's executive director. Her younger twin brothers Tom and Joe are also on the board. Missing from this story of tight siblings is brother Yoris, lost to cancer in infancy when Dusseldorp was eight. 'When I lost my brother, I realised that life comes for everyone in very unexpected ways, and that the person opposite you may have had a particular experience that you need to listen to and care about.' I ask Dusseldorp if she has a book in her. She laughs. 'If I do, it's just for me,' she says. 'I think it might help to put some stuff in order so I can work out what makes me creative, that way I can avoid losing courage. And maybe that's why people do it.' She reflects now on the road ahead; she hopes for a third season of Bay of Fires, and that the roles she plays, as well as creates, continue to have meaning; she doesn't want to just work for the sake of it. 'As an older woman, courage starts to wobble,' she says. 'I want to keep my courage until the very end, and I'm finding that right now I'm having to remind myself of that. That's partly because you become slightly invisible [as an older woman], less relevant possibly, and post-menopause, you need to redefine yourself.' Loading She adds women are finding strength in banding together post-menopause to 'bash through' the suffering of being ignored in this next stage of life. I suggest that shows such as Bay of Fires have proved there is an audience for engaging stories focused on older women. 'I think so,' she agrees. 'The courage to turn up is now something for me, but I want to have something to say. You've got to have a reason to be there, otherwise, shush!' Bay of Fires season two premieres on June 15 on ABC TV and iView.
The Age
37 minutes ago
- The Age
‘As an older woman, courage starts to wobble': How Marta Dusseldorp finds her strength
This story is part of the June 8 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. Walking through the rainforest in the remote west of her adopted Tasmanian home, actor Marta Dusseldorp finds beauty and brutality along the banks that are home to rare Huon pine. At one junction, the clear water of one river meets the yellow, soupy water of another, poisoned by copper mining tailings. 'It's just extraordinary, the confluence of man and nature,' says Sydney-born and raised Dusseldorp, 52, who, more than seven years ago, moved to the island state with actor-director husband Ben Winspear and their two daughters, Grace and Maggie. Dusseldorp has just completed shooting the second season of ABC TV comedy-drama Bay of Fires, which she co-created, co-produced and stars. Filming took place again in the well-preserved main street of the small Tasmanian town of Zeehan, known for silver mining. But this spot, where the King and Queen rivers meet, proved a more elusive location. 'I tried to film there, but it's really hard to get to, and the safety issues weren't going to quite work.' Surrounding mountains and valleys have nonetheless provided picturesque settings for the appealing Tassie-noir, to which Dusseldorp's picaresque character Anika fled with her two children after death threats were made against her in her former corporate life in Melbourne. Anika took on the alias Stella, and hid among a cohort of eccentric, protected witnesses: there is heroin being cooked, a religious cult that has arranged marriages, and an assassin waiting for the aliens to descend. The second season has capitalism and greed on its themes as the townsfolk pressure Stella for more payouts from her corporate scam, which has already netted them $3.4 million, and inflationary pressures have pushed the price of bread to $23 a loaf. New threats may yet force Stella into the drug trade with her old foe Frankie (Kerry Fox), presumed dead by all at the end of the first season. Like the twists in her show, life in the smallest Australian state has delivered what Dusseldorp did not predict: fertile, imaginative ground. While her husband was born in Wagga Wagga, he'd grown up in Hobart, and they both wanted their children to experience the Tasmanian lifestyle. But they did not know how long they would stay. The couple found a network of like-minded actors, writers and directors, and started their own production company, Archipelago. Tasmania is also home to mycelium, the underground network of fungi threads that shares water and nutrients between trees, and which Dusseldorp says is a metaphor for the artist-community connections she's found in the state. The culture here appears to stimulate both artistic growth and biodiversity. Living here, says Dusseldorp, 'stops the clutter and gives you focus. You can get a lot done in Tassie as connections are just one step away.' Today, Dusseldorp is wearing a fawn trench coat in the lobby of her Sydney hotel and drinking lemongrass tea with honey. Several years ago, life was more frenetic as she dominated television screens in three popular series: Janet King, A Place to Call Home and Jack Irish. As if the pressures of playing the lead in the first two shows were not enough, Dusseldorp would also carve out three months each year between TV seasons to do a theatre play, including War of the Roses, The Crucible, Scenes from a Marriage and A Doll's House, Part 2. Theatre became her 'weird' way of researching what the public was feeling, she reflects now, which helped her decide when she went back onto a TV set if she was playing her long-running screen characters 'too tough or not tough enough'. '[Audiences] come as these beasts, and they sit as one, like in a colosseum, and then turn on you,' she observes. 'If they don't like [the play] or whatever, you have to work out a way to re-engage them, unite them, and give them something to go home with; it's like being a conductor. You find out politically where people are at and what's funny, because it changes depending on the climate.' The Australian playwright Benedict Andrews said Dusseldorp is a 'very brave and captivating and muscular actress'. (She played the eponymous lead in his 2016 play Gloria.) 'Oh my god,' says Dusseldorp when I remind her of performing this role in Sydney's tiny 105-seat Stables Theatre. ' Gloria was a very particular beast. She was basically a cry from me about what it felt like to be in the spotlight. Benedict did a really great job of showing the internal shattering of Gloria as a mother and a partner, and what the costs are of [fame]. 'I didn't want to fully acknowledge [the costs of fame], and when I don't want to acknowledge something, I do a play about it, so I can be somebody else, live it out, and go, 'Got that out of my system!' I would often go home and fall in a heap, but it was done. Theatre is like severance: there it is, I did that, and I went through it, and now I'm OK.' Dusseldorp met Winspear in 2003 when they were working on separate Sydney Theatre Company productions. 'He was like a ship: solid, unique,' Dusseldorp told me in a 2013 interview. The attraction was such that she 'had to splash cold water on my face'. Since moving to Tasmania, Winspear has directed Dusseldorp in the plays The Bleeding Tree, The Maids and Women of Troy. What's her take on their relationship now? 'We still walk side by side, which I really love,' she says. 'And there's an intent to be the custodians of our daughters forever, and make sure we guide them as best we can. Our work together is sacred, so we try to make sure it's filled with honesty, mutual respect, care.' In 2013, when I visited the couple's home in Sydney's Edgecliff, Winspear was preparing the evening meal for Grace, then almost 6, and Maggie, 3. He said he was mindful of how acting and directing obligations can invert family life, so they resisted employing childcare. 'His love of his family is his north star,' says Dusseldorp now. 'It comes down to mutual respect in a long-term relationship, understanding that people have their own ways of doing things, and trying to learn from that.' Grace is now 18 and has left Tasmania to live in Sydney. A budding writer, she is studying English literature. 'She's written a TV series about the family, which I have not seen yet,' Dusseldorp laughs, 'and I have the right to vet, I've told her! Sometimes when we have a family situation, I see her jotting things down and I'm like, 'What is that?'.' Maggie, now 15, and like her sister was often on the set of her mother's shows. 'My kids feel very comfortable socially with adults because they've always been around them.' Dusseldorp is mindful that with privilege comes responsibility. She is producing a film with a domestic-violence theme that is yet to go into production. She is also on the board of the Sydney-based charity, the Dusseldorp Forum, formed in 1989 by her late paternal grandfather, Dick Dusseldorp, founder of construction giant Lend Lease. The forum aims to improve education, health and social outcomes for children and their families through community-led projects. After our interview, Dusseldorp is going to visit her sister Teya, who is the forum's executive director. Her younger twin brothers Tom and Joe are also on the board. Missing from this story of tight siblings is brother Yoris, lost to cancer in infancy when Dusseldorp was eight. 'When I lost my brother, I realised that life comes for everyone in very unexpected ways, and that the person opposite you may have had a particular experience that you need to listen to and care about.' I ask Dusseldorp if she has a book in her. She laughs. 'If I do, it's just for me,' she says. 'I think it might help to put some stuff in order so I can work out what makes me creative, that way I can avoid losing courage. And maybe that's why people do it.' She reflects now on the road ahead; she hopes for a third season of Bay of Fires, and that the roles she plays, as well as creates, continue to have meaning; she doesn't want to just work for the sake of it. 'As an older woman, courage starts to wobble,' she says. 'I want to keep my courage until the very end, and I'm finding that right now I'm having to remind myself of that. That's partly because you become slightly invisible [as an older woman], less relevant possibly, and post-menopause, you need to redefine yourself.' Loading She adds women are finding strength in banding together post-menopause to 'bash through' the suffering of being ignored in this next stage of life. I suggest that shows such as Bay of Fires have proved there is an audience for engaging stories focused on older women. 'I think so,' she agrees. 'The courage to turn up is now something for me, but I want to have something to say. You've got to have a reason to be there, otherwise, shush!' Bay of Fires season two premieres on June 15 on ABC TV and iView.
Perth Now
2 hours ago
- Perth Now
The old Leederville restaurant that deserves more attention
Duende has been around the block. Launched by local luminary Nic Trimboli, Perth's first Spanish tapas restaurant took over the space on an isthmus between Newcastle Street and Carr Place in Leederville previously occupied by Eminem — the much-lauded Turkish eatery, not the Detroit rapper — waaaaay back in 2003. That's so long ago the current crop of Perth food influencers were still blogging in their nappies or hitting child care for free canapes and bubbly milk when Duende served its first pimientos de padron and patatas bravas. Once considered among Perth's hottest restaurants, this joint has seen some action, and it shows. The decor is dated, menus arrive on clipboards, and the booths need new upholstery. A small fan rattled away on the bar, while daggy dance-pop blared away. Duende is Spanish for 'passion and inspiration'. At first glance, both seemed to be sorely lacking when my wife and I made a long overdue return to this Leederville mainstay for dinner on a Thursday evening. Duende tapas bar, Leederville. Credit: Supplied Duende tapas bar, Leederville Credit: Simon Collins When we walked past the chalkboards and into Duende, we were the only customers. Ay, no! By the time we left at about 8pm, only two other tables were occupied. Double ay, no! If this review achieves one thing, I hope it helps Duende return to the top of the pops. The food is banging — like, Ricky Martin's Livin' La Vida Loca banging — and the wine list has some mic-drop-worthy Spanish drops at prices that don't seem to have moved since Duende opened. Credit for the fantastic, mostly authentic, tapas goes to Indian-born chef Remya Geminiani, who grew up in Modena, Italy. The 'Italian pocket rocket', as she is described on the venue's socials, started a chef's apprenticeship when she was 14 years old, and was ducking flying frying pans in four-star hotel restaurants at 18. Chicken and chorizo paella at Duende tapas bar in Leederville. Credit: Supplied Geminiani trained and worked in kitchens across the Canary Islands, focusing on traditional techniques and Mediterranean flavours for five years before following her heart Down Under in 2016. She worked as head chef at a Melbourne cafe for four years before moving to Margaret River for a stint at Voyager Estate, where she refined her skills and built know-how around fermentation, smoking, and seasonal WA produce. While she only joined Duende in April, Geminiani has already had an impact. She's clearly a gem, and Phil Crocker, who bought the Leederville diner in 2013, did well to recruit her. Service was sharp. A lovely glass of cava and sangria, full to the brim, lobbed on the table within minutes of us plonking down on a table for four. (We had plenty of room, the waiter said.) Later we shared a brilliant bottle of Spanish wine, a Murcia-style blending monastrell and cabernet sauvignon grapes that was on special for $40. What year is it again? The padron peppers at Leederville tapas bar Duende. Credit: Supplied Duende also has signature cocktails with an Iberian twist, plus gin and tonics, spirits, and a decent roster of sherries. I remembered why I never drive home from this place. Speaking of specials, we decided to start with the chorizo de vino tino ($26), a flame-grilled fancy mini-snagger from Northbridge's Torre Butchers in red wine reduction served with charred bread. The chorizo was rich, quite gamey, and delicious. The champinones ($22), or mushrooms marinated in Pedro Ximenez sherry, were served with blue cheese and candied walnuts. A champion dish, you could really taste the PX in the mushies, which were served warm in a ceramic ramekin. A must-have dish. Gambas ajillo ($26), or prawns cooked in garlic, chilli and white wine, at Duende. Credit: Supplied Padron peppers are a staple of tapas for a good reason, and the pimiento de padron ($22) at Duende is excellent. Perhaps they could've been scorched more for that blackened, blistered skin but they were juicy and rested on a fresh herb mayonnaise with snow pea tendrils and oil — and radishes. Chef Geminiani has a thing for radishes. Where other Perth chefs overuse fried shallots, Duende's head chef popped thinly sliced radishes on almost everything bar the dessert, my sangria, and the bill. Clearly, Big Radish has got to her. After those three small plates, we ordered the chicken and chorizo paella ($22) and gambas ajillo ($26) — six delicious, well-charred prawns cooked in garlic, chilli and white wine. Another tasty winner, the small paella had as much chook and chorizo as rice. I like a bit of spice in my rice, so I asked for a hot sauce. Maybe Tabasco, if they had it. The chef whipped up a chilli sauce that was bang-on, and nearly lifted my head off. Luckily, I had some red plonk to calm my palate. The chocolate mousse at Leederville tapas bar Duende. Credit: Supplied The chocolate mousse with vanilla ice-cream and berry coulis was rich and sticky. Blackberries hid inside the smooth choccy, while more PX syrup made this a grown-up dessert. We shared a sherry drier than Hacks comedy diva Deborah Vance to really kick this home, while my wife commandeered the spoon. Daggy decor, bad dance music . . . who cares? The food rocked my socks off. I may never wear shoes again. Duende isn't the only tapas joint in Perth. It's not even the only one in Leederville. But it might be the best. To quote Eminem, the Detroit rapper, not the Turkish eatery, 'guess who's back'. Duende 662 Newcastle Street, Leederville OPEN Wednesday-Sunday, noon-late. CONTACT 9228 0123, BOOKINGS Yes THE VERDICT Hola! Plot a return to Perth's original tapas joint. New head chef Remya Geminiani has it back on track and banging with superb small dishes and great-value wines. Don't drive. 16.5/20
