Sometimes, the show really shouldn’t go on

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On-stage fires, forgotten lines, misplaced props, fits of the giggles and a rubber chicken landing in the lap of a lady in the front row … there aren’t many disasters veteran actors Mark Kilmurry and Jamie Oxenbould haven’t witnessed in their long careers.

And now they’ve turned this catalogue of cock-ups into a new production that celebrates everything that can and often does go wrong in amateur theatre.

Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall, written by Kilmurry and Oxenbould and also starring Oxenbould, premieres at Kirribilli’s Ensemble Theatre this week.

Jamie Oxenbould (left) and Mark Kilmurry are familiar with the world of amateur dramatics.Credit: James Brickwood

In the play, it is the opening night of an amateur theatre company’s new show. Most of the cast have called in sick, but the director and two remaining actors are determined the show must go on – which is their first mistake.

“You know sometimes the show shouldn’t go on,” says Oxenbould. “I always say, ‘Why must the show go on? Cancel it. Give them their money back’. It’s just a play. It’s not like it’s a brain operation.”

Oxenbould is very familiar with the world of amateur dramatics after being raised on Sydney’s north shore by parents who were keen performers.

‘Why must the show go on? Cancel it. It’s just a play. It’s not like it’s a brain operation.’

“I grew up with me and my brothers sitting in the rehearsal room,” he says. “My mum was a nurse. My dad worked in the bank. They both had jobs and lives and everything, but they just loved amateur theatre. That was their hobby.”

However, even as a youngster, Oxenbould could detect there were some people on stage whose enthusiasm outstripped their abilities by a considerable margin.

“There were a couple of people I think I could tell were not fit for the stage,” he says. “They were in musicals but obviously couldn’t sing or dance … or act. They’re people who are real estate agents during the day and then by night think they can sing.”

Sharon Millerchip and Jamie Oxenbould in 2010’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers.Credit: Natalie Boog

Like Oxenbould, Kilmurry – also artistic director at the Ensemble – has drawn on early experience in the amateur theatre world for Midnight Murder. As a youngster he was cast among a group of amateurs in a play written by his mother, a talented TV writer.

“In one of my mum’s plays, it went really badly wrong,” he says. “Everything went wrong on the night, but people said it was the best thing they’d ever seen.”

Despite that, he has retained great affection for the amateur theatre.

“We are in the business of theatre, so we treat it differently,” he says. “It’s our job. Whereas people who love it are in it for the idea of it rather than the doing of it. We do it to get paid. Amateur actors do it because they can say they’re in Hello Dolly. I love the fact there’s an opportunity for everybody. What’s maybe hard about it is when you’re in the audience wishing there wasn’t an opportunity for everybody.”

Not that professional theatre is immune from the Murphy’s law of the stage. Oxenbould remembers starring in Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers in 2010 opposite Sharon Millerchip.

“We clashed heads on opening night. My tooth went into her forehead, she started bleeding. I got a fat lip and we just had to carry on. To us it looked like a catastrophe. I thought the whole audience was looking at me and going ‘why don’t you just stop?’ But you come off stage and they go, oh no, we didn’t even notice. What you notice on stage is completely out of proportion.”

Then there’s every actor’s worst nightmare – “drying”, or forgetting lines.

“I blanked on To be, or not to be, that is the question … ” says Kilmurry. “And I thought ‘it’s something about being noble’. Very good question. I looked at the audience and they were like, ‘Oh, this is a new interpretation,’ and they’re leaning forward. I thought, I need to say something quite soon and just got half a sentence out, and then we’re back on track. Now every time I want to do that most famous speech in theatre, my heart goes a little bit, I think, ‘Don’t f— it up’.”

Beyond forgetting lines, the other great enemy of actors professional and amateur is contracting an irresistible case of the giggles. Kilmurry recalls a 1999 production of Cyrano de Bergerac for Sydney Theatre Company.

“I had to grab a piece of chicken – which was rubber, but it looked good – and throw it over the barricades, but it hit a beam and landed in the front row, in a lady’s lap. And then all of us got hysterical and we had armour on. So it was all going chink. None of us could look at each other for about 20 minutes after.”

Oxenbould believes that, beyond being entertaining, Hamlington Hall should be therapeutic for the actors who will undoubtedly be in the audience.

“I think every actor who comes and sees this will have gone through one of these things somewhere in their life,” he says. “I think it’s going to be very cathartic for them.”

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