Latest news with #SheridanHarbridge
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Amplified review – loving but uneven musical tribute to the Divinyls' Chrissy Amphlett
The Divinyls' Chrissy Amphlett was the kind of rock star we just don't make anymore: brashly subversive, mercurial, brightly burning and gone all too soon. She grew out of the dick-swinging pub rock scene of the late 70s but retained a punk feminist edge throughout her career, a sense of danger and defiance. Actor Sheridan Harbridge attempts to revive Amphlett's spirit in this part-biographical tour, part-tribute concert, which is a loving – if fragmentary and uneven – panegyric to a lost rock goddess. When approaching this kind of material, a performer can aim for a precise and mannered recreation of every vocal tick and facial expression or settle for something more suggestive and impressionistic. Amplified opens with a solid, energising version of I'll Make You Happy, and it's immediately clear that Harbridge has opted for the latter approach. She borrows some of Amphlett's inflections and vocal mannerisms but we're aware we're watching Harbridge channel an attitude rather than fully submerging herself into character. This is both Amplified's charm and limitation. Amphlett grew up in Geelong – according to her, merely the first in a series of prisons she'd have to escape – when it was still a rough and dangerous place to live, dominated by the Ford factory and a heavily industrialised waterfront. Harbridge evokes those early years of abusive men and nasty cops, of sexual violence and drug addiction, culminating in a rendition of Boys in Town that is potent in its desperation. When she sings 'Get me out of here', we can feel the stakes. This is also true of scenes set much later in Manhattan, where a post-Divinyls Amphlett prepares a solo show she'll never get to perform (she was tragically cut down by cancer in her early 50s). Her decline is subtly suggested and poignantly underpinned by a rendition of Good Die Young – although it seems an odd decision dramatically to treat the bulk of her time with the Divinyls as an ellipsis, given how central that period was to her fame. We will hear the big hits eventually – songs like Pleasure and Pain and I Touch Myself – but they aren't as well supported by the biographical material and so we don't feel them as intimately or acutely. For a large part of the (relatively short) run time, Harbridge indulges in a kind of wish fulfilment, envisaging the show we're watching as an actualisation of that unrealised solo show in New York. This 'final act before the curtain' narrative device seems ubiquitous in music biographies – from Renée Zellweger's Judy Garland biopic to the play about Billie Holiday's final performance, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill – and while it gives Amplified some structure, it feels hesitant and half-hearted. By the conclusion, the device seems to have been abandoned altogether. Director and co-creator Sarah Goodes tries to wrangle Amplified into something vigorous and coherent but, while there are moments of joy and jubilation, no truly illuminating portrait of the singer emerges. If Amphlett were more famous, the details of her life and arc of her career better known, this kaleidoscopic approach might have worked well; the uninitiated may find it all a bit confusing. Amplified works best when it threads Harbridge's own feminism through Amphlett's biography, when she connects directly to the songs and the life like plugging into a power grid. Early in the piece, Harbridge explains the effect Amphlett had on her sexual awakening, with an anecdote about a bus and the seam of her pants that perfectly elucidates a song like I Touch Myself. But she doesn't perform the song here, inexplicably leaving it to the end like a tease. When it does arrive, it feels perversely like an afterthought. There is a strange ambivalence haunting the edges of Amplified in its current state. Harbridge seems preoccupied with the differences between herself and Amphlett: she eschews any attempt to look like her – there's no red wig or school uniform, for example – and only flirts with an imitation of her sound. Harbridge comes from the world of musical theatre, with its tendency to neatness and closure, but Amphlett was a bone fide rock star, messy, obstinate and brazen. Until she finds her inner rock goddess, Harbridge's tribute will remain stubbornly underdone. Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett is on in Melbourne until 13 June as part of Rising festival, then Brisbane festival 19-21 September
ABC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Spirit of rock legend Chrissy Amphlett channelled in Rising cabaret Amplified
As frontwoman of Australian rock group Divinyls, formed in Sydney in 1980 with guitarist Mark McEntee, Chrissy Amphlett was renowned for her powerful stage charisma. Her thick, bright red hair; short, black-and-white sailor tunic with suspender belt and fishnets; her "Monster Schoolgirl" persona and sexually provocative stage-writhing, are legendary. And her music is still incredibly powerful. "When you're in the centre of those songs and they're a wall of rage, it feels mythically enormous," says Sheridan Harbridge, who performs in Amplified: the Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett, as part of Melbourne's Rising festival. The word that keeps coming up as I talk about Amphlett with Harbridge and the show's director, Sarah Goodes, is "electric". "People who I've spoken to, her friends and people who saw her, they really describe her as conjuring an electricity that just gripped the room," Harbridge says. "There were no women in rock doing what she did at the time. She was getting up there and giving sex, passion and rock'n'roll, any way she wanted to. With no rules of pandering for men or pandering for women." Amplified, a cabaret, brings to life Amphlett's story through her music. Goodes is quick to point out that the rockstar contained multitudes, beyond her on-stage, rage-filled persona. "At the time you had to pre-empt it, you know. To avoid being eaten alive, you had to kill first," Goodes says. The show aims to let all Amphlett's contradictions — of rage, vulnerability and anger — "shimmer in the air together", Goodes says. Harbridge is drawn to telling stories of the women society has labelled "disobedient". "As a writer, it's always been my sort of manifesto … making sure that their story is on the record." Amphlett rejected feminist ideas prevalent in the late 1970s and early 80s, that dismissed overt sexuality as pandering to a male gaze. "Chrissy was like, 'I don't need to follow any of these rules,'" Harbridge says. "That was her punk." "It's that ancient [contradiction of] women being too sexual or not sexual enough," Goodes says. "It's this impossible shadow-boxing with what it means to be a woman. And she just burst through it and roared. Everyone just shut up and loved it and embraced it." The idea for a one-woman show about Amphlett's life was conceived by Amphlett herself. She'd been working on the idea before she died of breast cancer in 2013. It was Amphlett's longtime friend Simon Morley (of Puppetry of the Penis fame) who brought the idea to Goodes, back in 2018. COVID delays pushed the project back but, eventually, Morley asked Goodes to direct. She was interested, on one condition. "If I can do it with Sheridan," Goodes says. "I couldn't really imagine anyone else who can traverse that tightrope between rock'n'roll and theatre. "You don't want someone impersonating Chrissy," Goodes says. "What [Sheridan is] able to do is channel the spirit of her." Harbridge describes Amplified as a "rock odyssey". The cabaret format allows her to directly address the audience, to conjure memories of what Amphlett was like on stage. "The fans who adored her are as much a character as I am," Harbridge says. "I want it to be a communion of an artist. So yeah, we're in the room together." The weight of responsibility in creating a show centred on the life and music of someone so beloved by fans doesn't escape Harbridge. "People get this distant, shimmering, glossy look in their eyes when you mention Chrissy Amphlett. They go, 'Oh yeah, I saw her in Toowoomba in '88. And she just blew the roof off.'" Goodes has directed numerous plays about other trailblazing Australian women — art patron and founder of Melbourne's Heide gallery, Sunday Reed (Anthony Weigh's Sunday, for MTC in 2023, STC in 2024), former prime minster Julia Gillard (Joanna Murray Smith's Julia, National Tour in 2024). And she says that the key is not in attempting to imitate that person, but in finding ways to bring their essence to life in the room. Harbridge and Goodes hope Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett will offer younger audiences the chance to get to know Amphlett's music and celebrate her as an artist and rule-breaker 20 years ahead of her time; as a pioneering woman who kicked down doors for future generations of women artists to walk through. "I think an artist who enrages at the time, is often giving you a glimmer of the rules of the future," Harbridge says. "Someone who just keeps pushing other people's brains into that kind of considerate sponginess. Until one day, the whole matrix moves. "I know I stand on the shoulders of women like her, who demanded to work in an art form. And now I don't take that for granted." And what would Amphlett think of the show? "That's all I'm worried about," she admits. "I hope we're honouring her. I really hope we are. And I hope we're letting people meet her beyond the 'monster' persona. Which is what she wanted from doing the show." Amplified: the Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett runs as part of Rising festival from June 11-13.
