Image via www.hayestheatre.com.au
Tim Freedman is a very good actor. That surprised me. I don’t know why it should. I guess we just slot people into categories, and I had slotted Tim into the category called ‘Whitlams’, which somehow didn’t allow for good acting.
But he certainly hit his mark from the opening scene. He slobbed out onto a stage set as Harry Nilsson’s den, totally believable in the dressing gown straight from the cover of Nilsson Schmilsson, with peerless American accent (though pedants would complain there wasn’t enough Brooklyn in it), and an alcoholic demeanor any actor would die for.
This was to be Harry Nilsson’s life story and we were ready and eager for it before the first word was spoken or the first note sung. That life sped before our eyes with a kind of Grecian inevitability. We learn early that the character before us is 50 years old, that he has less than two years left to live, and why that early death would have to be so inevitable.
Nilsson was a hard-living, self-indulgent, self-sabotaging genius, whose flame needed to snuff out ahead of the pack, just as his life had been lived ahead of that same pack. It is almost a cliché of the eccentric good-time rapscallion, which one suspects Nilsson cultivated, and which Freedman so lovingly renders with a portrayal that captures all the subtleties and all the gross motor moments.
Indeed if this had been a one man play without music, I would have been more than willing to stay with it, such was the quality of the acting and the character Freedman created. But of course this was also cabaret, and we had the benefit of Freedman haunting voice as well.
The really fascinating question for me, right from the first tune was: Did Harry Nilsson really front for The Whitlams? Every Nilsson song Freedman sang, sounded just like a Freedman song. Was this because Nilsson had been such a huge influence on Freedman? Or was it because anything Tim sings has to sound like Tim, no matter who the composer may be? The answer came half way through the show when Freedman/Nilsson sang one song from Randy Newman and I could swear I heard a refrain from a Whitlams song within it.
Such speculation aside, the Nilsson songs were immediately recognizable, and the nostalgia was only heightened by Freedman’s unique delivery. If I had any criticism at all it might be that the script was just a tad obvious in parts, but then maybe that perfectly reflected the simple, self-referencing way in which Harry Nilsson lived his life. And in any event Freedman’s acting was so good, it totally covered any of that.
The show only runs till this Sunday, so I would highly recommend swift action.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Everybody’s Talkin’ ’bout me
Hayes Theatre Co, Potts Point
13-19 April 2015
