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Sydney's State Theatre is buzzing as the countdown ticks down for the opening of Jake Heggie's opera Dead Man Walking, which is being co-produced by Alexander Productions and Andrew McManus.
A week before the opening, schedules are so tight that the Herald is granted a single hour for photographing and interviewing the cast's four New Zealanders: Teddy Tahu Rhodes (who plays the convicted killer Joe de Rocher), Jud Arthur (prison warden George Benson), Stephanie Acraman (Kitty Hart, the murdered girl's mother) and Hayden Tee (a priest, Father Grenville).
At 4.45pm, the photographer and I are escorted through the backstage area to the ornate auditorium - a visually incongruous backdrop to designer Dan Potra's stark set. The company manager arrives at 5pm, warning that Rhodes will have to eat while we talk, but a stagehand points out that should not be a problem as the singer has ordered only a can of Diet Coke for dinner.
By 5.16pm, the artists have been photographed - in a record time of four minutes 23 seconds - and we have made our way back through the theatre, across the stage where conductor Paul Kildea is rehearsing the chorus, and down the backstage stairs to the dressing room marked "Mr Rhodes". Here, I use two more minutes to explain to the company manager that interviewing four people at once, in a 2x2m space co-occupied by several make-up artists applying a tattoo to Rhodes' shoulder, would be difficult. She agrees to leave me with Rhodes and Arthur, and to bring Acraman and Tee back in 20 minutes.
There is no room to sit down and the show's star attraction is too polite to use the chair offered by the make-up team while I have to stand. "You'll have to sit down," make-up tells him. "We can't reach your shoulder otherwise." Arthur comes to the rescue by removing a pile of debris from a two-seater sofa against a wall and making space for the two of us to sit down opposite him. It is 5.20pm.
This is Rhodes' third Dead Man Walking production (the first, for San Francisco Opera in 2000, launched his international career) and performing the work remains a challenge. The opening scene depicts the rape and murder for which De Rocher stands convicted and "it feels very awkward to take yourself to that place". The execution scene is as harrowing. "You're strapped to a table; it feels very real."
Learning Heggie's score for the first production was taxing. At the San Francisco audition, he sang wrong notes and rhythms "everywhere" but was offered the role because, so Heggie told him afterwards, he had managed to portray the convict's attitude. He chuckles at the memory. "I think what they thought of as 'attitude' was really my own fear. I'd received the score a mere 10 days before the audition and was beside myself."
Arthur agrees that although it took a while to learn Heggie's score - "there's very little melodic line" - the music is not difficult.
But the work is being presented as theatre and since there are no surtitles, the audience has to be able to follow the text at all times. He enjoys the fusion of disparate elements that the piece offers.
"We sing full voice but the work offers jazz, special effects, opera singers, pop singers - it's almost cross-over."
The company manager arrives with Acraman and Tee and we leave the baritones to make our way down a flight of stairs and into an unoccupied dressing room. Thirteen minutes' interview time to go.
If Rhodes and Arthur have established operatic careers, for Acraman and Tee Dead Man Walking represents a breakthrough. The soprano, who grew up in Hawke's Bay and who has appeared with several New Zealand opera companies, is making her Australian opera debut in the role of the murdered girl's mother. For her the test is not to "overweight" the role with stylised singing in a production where diction is paramount.
Tee, who grew up in Northland and Auckland before establishing himself in theatre, cabaret and musicals, is getting a first taste of opera in Dead Man Walking. He auditioned for producer Nicole Alexander after she had seen him in Titanic-the-Musical (Sydney, 2006) and was offered the role of Father Grenville despite a lack of music reading skills.
When a couple of weeks before the first rehearsal Alexander mentioned that singers were expected to turn up note perfect (this is not always the case in cabaret or musicals), he panicked. "I crammed for two weeks. I'd never been as nervous in my life. The [tenor] range suits my voice but the music is atonal and very complex."
The company manager reappears to announce that other cast members need our dressing room. We follow her down yet another flight of stairs. We talk for a few more minutes before the singers leave for their stage call.
When they've gone, I wander up several flights of stairs, past the room marked "Mr Rhodes", where the make-up team are applying finishing touches to the tattoo on the shoulder of the singer, across the stage and through a door leading nowhere. There, I bump into the photographer, who is also looking for the way out. Once again, we go looking for the company manager.
