Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s saucy new role in the first major musical post Covid-19

Kerri-Anne Kennerley hasn’t set foot on a theatre stage in 55 years, but that won’t stop her strapping on her boots for a daring debut in Pippin, Sydney’s first major musical back since Covid-19.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley will feature in the musical Pippin at the Lyric Theatre. Picture: John Appleyard

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Kerri-Anne Kennerley is flying high. Literally.

“Watch this,” she says as she dives into her handbag, pulls out her brand new iPhone and dials up a sequence of atypical images from yesterday’s rehearsals.

There she is, not in one of her showstopping gowns from Logie Awards past but in what is now known as activewear, lycra tights and loose top, hanging upside down and dangling by her ankles from a trapeze high above the stage at the Lyric Theatre in The Star.

The next shot shows KAK in plank position, perfectly horizontal as if paddling a surf board.

“I have to roll up to this position, keeping my ankles tight together, then the knees and then the butt, with my arms outstretched. They call this pose ‘The Bird’.”

It’s an elegant position, the aerial equivalent of the downward dog.

Does she assume this position before bursting into song?

“No. I start singing during the move.”

“What are those blue things on your feet?”

“They’re my stage boots. I’m wearing them for the first time. The director says I need to get used to working in them.”

Is that the director standing underneath? The bloke with the big muscles.

“No, that’s Harley. He used to be an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil. Poor bugger, he’s teaching me the movements and he’s there to catch me in case I slip.”

“Are you wearing a safety harness?”

“No.”

Kerri-Anne-Kennerley and Ainsley Melham in Pippin. Picture: David-Hooley

This conversation follows a rehearsal, on the adjacent stage of the Lyric Theatre, for Pippin, an American musical in which Kennerley has a cameo role, and we are lunching at Sokyo, the high-style Japanese restaurant tucked well away from the noisy slot machines at The Star.

If the service is a bit wobbly and unsophisticated, the food, luxurious bento boxes brimming with a farandole of flavours, is scrumptious. And Kennerley is looking stellar in persimmon silk, her hair freshly groomed this very morning by her long-term beautician.

Producer John Frost knows that when it comes to casting, the more big name performers on the bill the better, hence Kennerley landing the cameo role of Berthe, hero Pippin’s grandmother in Frosty’s revival of this eponymous rock and roll musical.

It premiered off-Broadway almost 50 years ago when Kennerley was a teenager at school in the Brisbane bayside suburb of Sandgate.

She first trod the boards, aged 12, in school concerts, always, on her own admission, “out front as the star.” Those juvenile appearances and now, this return to the stage 55 years later, might be seen as bookends to a career embracing a dizzy sequence of roles including cabaret chanteuse, soloist with rock bands, recording artist, gigs in resorts in the so-called Borscht Belt, America’s preferred Jewish vacation destination in the Catskills in upstate New York, to serial roles as actor, host, contestant, news and weather presenter and panellist, on every Aussie TV channel except ABC and SBS.

It’s hard to imagine a time on the tube when she wasn’t a distinctive presence. This ubiquity has been Kennerley’s great strength.

The cast of Pippin. Picture: Brian Geach

Pippin on the other hand is less well-known. It’s not in the major league of musicals, no West Side Story, no My Fair Lady, but it has proved remarkably durable, thanks perhaps to a workmanlike score by Stephen Schwartz but, more importantly, by the presence among the credits of the magical name, Bob Fosse.

Dancer, director, choreographer, Fosse first swam into audience consciousness with an appearance in MGM’s 1953 technicolor version of Cole Porter’s smash musical, Kiss me Kate.

In the movie, Fosse played Hortensio, one of a trio of dancing suitors (the other two were Tommy Rall and Bobby Van) to Ann Miller’s Bianca, and these four turned in firecracker dancing performances on screen.

But it was not so much as a performer that Fosse earned a place in the Pantheon of great music theatre stars but as a director and choreographer.

His dance routines in Pippin are perhaps more memorable than the score and it’s these Fossian moves that Kennerley finds challenging.

Dancing has never been her long suit and she finds the exaggerated, angular signature forms a bit of a stretch. Not so the agile chorus line of dancers.

“There’s not an ounce of body fat on any of them,” she says in admiration tinged with a smidgen of envy.

This Sydney incarnation is what is known in the music theatre game as a ‘replica staging’, meaning that every gesture, nuance and inflection is immutably codified, a kind of Kabuki-like ritual that admits of no improvisation. A small team of American imports enforces adherence to proven formulas for success, drilling the all-Aussie cast like drill sergeants. These productions are high-risk, big ticket items. Details count.

Leo Schofield (right) lunches with Kerri-Anne Kennerley (left) at Sokyo in Pyrmont. Picture: John Appleyard

Kennerley is in awe of her young colleagues. “They’re terrific. Such professionals. All so young.”

At 67, does she feel threatened surrounded by all this youthful talent? Not on your nellie. More awed.

Feeling mellow, I direct the conversation to more personal matters. The public, readers of women’s magazines and TV guides are well aware of some of Kennerley’s more difficult personal moments, her insensitive statements on political subjects such as climate change, environmental protests and migration, but it’s the matter of her husband’s illness and death that generates something of a conversational speed hump.

She met the genial John Kennerley in America. Born in the north of England, he was in the United States to set up Lotto in New York State. There began a seriously happy alliance, marriage in 1984, and a placid coexistence.

I ask what is the happiest moment of her life.

“When I married John. We had a beautiful wedding at the Opera House, 150 family and friends. Late afternoon, the sun setting behind the Harbour Bridge. It was a perfect moment.”

Then a freak accident, a fall over a low balustrade left John a quadriplegic. She became his principal carer until he passed three years later. She describes what being a carer means and as she does so, tears begin to appear in the corners of her eyes. She dabs them away.

“People can’t imagine what it’s like to see someone you love so helpless. He didn’t want to go on.”

How did she cope?

Nature helped. Torrential rains brought the ceiling down in the bedroom, dressing room and makeup room in her Woollahra mansion.

“Covid-19 put many tradesmen out of business but fortunately not painters and decorators and I found myself supervising work on a six figure repair project.” Right now she is reprising her carer role with her 99-year-old mother.

“When John Frost rang me to offer me the role of Berthe in Pippin I thought he was joking,” she recalls. But she thought about it.

Perhaps someone told her that although the character has only one solo, the lady who sang it in a New York revival was propelled to stardom and to a lead supporting role in another Stephen Schwartz musical, Wicked.

“I thought, ‘why not’?”

Chances are that, when La Kennerley does her stuff, hurtles though the air like that daring young man on the flying trapeze of Victorian music hall fame, kicks up those blue-booted heels and delivers her number No Time at All, she’ll wow the audience. We Aussies love a battler.