“My everest”: Eddie Perfect opens up on his most epic role yet in Beetlejuice the Musical
He’s played spin king Shane Warne and won fans as Mick Holland in beloved TV show Offspring but nailing the taxing role of Beetlejuice has been a challenge of mountainous proportions for Melbourne’s creative marvel Eddie Perfect.
Victoria
Don't miss out on the headlines from Victoria. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Melbourne’s creative marvel Eddie Perfect has climbed his own version of Mt Everest in taking on the devilishly delightful role of Beetlejuice in the lavish stage musical of the same name.
Perfect, who wrote the music and lyrics for the show which had its world premiere on Broadway in 2019, has stepped into the namesake role for the first time for Beetlejuice The Musical’s Melbourne season.
He openly admits nailing the epic, athletic and taxing role has been a challenge of mountainous proportions. It is the first time he has played the character.
“Alex Timbers, the director, rang me up and said, ‘Would you play Beetlejuice?’ and I’m like, ‘Do you know that I can play Beetlejuice, cos I don’t know’,” Perfect said.
“He was like, ‘You’ll be great.’
“It was 2020, it was in lockdown, the world had stopped so I was like, ‘Yes’.”
However, he said he second guessed himself after committing to the role.
“I got increasingly intimidated by it, because it’s a ginormous role,” Perfect said.
“I’ve seen Alex Brightman do it on Broadway, who is at least 10 years my junior and a tenor, and I sort of panicked and I tried to pull out of it a million times.
“But then I decided that it was going to be my challenge.
“It was kind of like a decision between being old and being young and I was like, if I say, ‘No’ to this, that’s it, I’m old.
“It is good for me at 47 to have a really big challenge.
“Everyone else is running marathons or kayaking across the Tasman Sea, or whatever the hell middle-aged men are supposed to do to make themselves feel alive, and I was like, ‘Well, maybe this is my Everest’.”
Beetlejuice The Musical opened in May at the Regent Theatre with critics heaping it with praise and theatregoers enthralled by the cheeky mix of dark humour, high energy and genuine emotion. It is a show full of surprises and while derived from the film of the same name, you don’t need to have seen the movie to fall under the spell of the story being told on stage.
Perfect is, frankly, perfect as the demon with mischievous intent.
“There’s aspects of the role where I’m still improving and I still feel I can do it better, but I got there,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve lost 20kg in four weeks just from running and sweating and yelling and screaming and the costumes. It’s unbelievably physical exercise. I’m actually really, really loving it.”
Beetlejuice The Musical has been in Perfect’s life for over a decade, starting when he first pitched to be part of the show’s music and lyrics team in 2014.
Growing up on the Mornington Peninsula and going to school at St Bede’s College in Mentone, Perfect had already built a stellar reputation as a comedian, cabaret performer, actor, writer, lyricist and singer in Australia before he set his sights on cracking Broadway.
He memorably created and starred in Shane Warne The Musical, a stage show that even the late cricketing great appreciated and enjoyed.
It was a show, he says, he created with love for Warne and the huge life he lived.
“You need to really care about your characters and even though I feel like Shane sort of represents the person that I wasn’t in my school – (he was) popular and charismatic, I was very shy and quiet and not good at sport – I did see a lot of myself in him, weirdly,” Perfect said.
“And I love anyone that lives a big, interesting, courageous, risk-taking life. It’s something I’ve always wanted to aspire to do and I feel like you can’t really have a big, interesting, exciting, life without making a bunch of mistakes and mistakes are what make people interesting.”
Perfect had also earned a huge fan base thanks to his role as Mick Holland in the beloved TV series, Offspring, alongside Kat Stewart, Asher Keddie and Matthew Le Nevez.
However, it was his time as part of the song writing team on Strictly Ballroom The Musical that made him set his sights on “getting on that great big writer list in the sky in New York.”
“I really loved the experience, but I realised I wanted to write a whole score, I did not just want to write songs inside a score, I wanted to be in charge of telling the whole story musically,” Perfect said.
“I wanted to collaborate with a book writer and directors and creatives and I knew that New York was the place to make that happen.
“So instead of doing anything about it, I complained to my wife, Lucy, who said, ‘just buy a ticket to New York and go’.”
On the way to spend a couple of weeks in the Big Apple in 2014, Perfect stayed with his mate, Tim Minchin, in LA.
Minchin introduced him to John Buzzetti, who is now his agent, and mentioned that Beetlejuice The Musical was in development and they were looking for a composer lyricist team.
Perfect asked if he could pitch for the show. The creative team answered quickly: “No.”
“The way it works on Broadway is they have a certain budget and they commission demos from a bunch of fancy composer lyricist teams and they did not extend the budget to include me to write demos, so I said I would write two demos (songs) for free,” Perfect said.
It was in his small studio in the back of his home in Brunswick in Melbourne that Perfect crafted the songs for his demo that would change his life.
“One of them is now the opening number ‘The Whole Being Dead Thing’ and the other one was Lydia’s big angsty song called ‘Dead Mom’,” Perfect said.
After a long process Perfect landed the gig, with the call confirming he had been hired coming as he was knee deep in reality TV.
“I was a judge on Australia’s Got Talent and we were shooting at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne,” he recalled.
“I had just seen a guy with a whip, whipping six brumbies around the stage of Majesty Theatre and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a sight I am never going to see again, that was pretty crazy’ and then I had dinner break and I got the call.
“I had been going to New York at this point for maybe two years and it really felt like a fruitless exercise.
“Every time I went I would be away from Lucy and the girls (their daughters Kitty and Charlotte) and I just felt like I was on the outside of the candy shop with my face pressed to the glass, peering in with no idea how to get in.
“Beetlejuice was the first concrete thing I knew of that was like an opportunity and my expectations were not that I would get the job, my expectations were maybe I can get my writing under the nose of Alex Timbers, who is an amazing Broadway director, and maybe I can show my American agent that I can write to an American brief.
“I turned myself inside out writing Beetlejuice. I am a people pleaser, but I also had a sense that this was my shot to make an impact with my writing and to show what I can do and I really went for it.”
When Beetlejuice The Musical opened on Broadway in 2019 Perfect found himself in the extraordinary position of having two shows – Beetlejuice and King Kong – playing on the famed theatre strip at the same time.
He wrote songs for the Broadway version of King Kong and was the composer/lyricist on Beetlejuice.
“While it looks like an achievement, and I guess it was an achievement, writing two shows at once at that level was very stressful,” Perfect said.
“One show is more than a full-time job. Doing two shows was really complicated.
“It is a fantastic process, but doing two of those (at the same time) was foolhardy, but I did not really have any choice. I got the job writing songs for King Kong 18 months after I started work on Beetlejuice and the fact that those two paths converged and opened at the same time was, I guess, a miracle, but maybe a slightly unwanted miracle.”
Now, while still deep in the world of Beetlejuice as he fronts the show in Melbourne, Perfect has plenty of other projects in development.
“It’s really important to find projects that you are 100 per cent right for,” he said.
“I am writing shows for Broadway, but they are all things that I want to write and then find the people I want to write (and work) with and develop them over long periods of time. I’ve got several iron in the fire.”
With his talent recognised internationally, Perfect has never wanted to up sticks and permanently move overseas.
He spent two years in New York when Beetlejuice was in development and then playing on Broadway, but he and his family returned to Melbourne and still call it home.
It is where he can write and create, be a horse dad for his wife and daughters and dabble in his interest in birds.
“I would call myself a bird noticer,” he said.
“I just notice birds as I go about my life. I like walking in the bush and I live next to the Yarra River and if there’s birds I stop and notice them, but I would never hide out and wait for them.”
EDDIE PERFECT: FAST FACT QUESTIONS
What was your first job?
I was a paper boy at the age of 12 around Mentone. I got up six days a week at 5.30am and delivered papers by bike. I earned 25 bucks a week.
If you weren’t doing this job (singer/writer/lyricist/composer/actor/comedian/cabaret performer) what would you be doing?
I’d be running a music theatre themed toasted sandwich van, staffed entirely by musical theatre performers between gigs.
What book should everyone read?
Everyone should read J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Franny and Zooey (also by Salinger) is a great book. Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. All of Cormac McCarthy books.
If you could live anywhere in the world besides Melbourne, where would it be?
Two cities that I really love are New York and Amsterdam.
What was your first concert?
Indigo Girls.
Who inspires you?
Lucy, my wife.
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out. The things that have gotten me to where I am haven’t been advised, there has just been encouragement. So, if I could mysteriously go back in time to visit my 18-year-old self I’d say, ‘You’re doing great.’
First car?
Kombi Van.
What’s your biggest career regret?
I have career regrets, but I don’t regret having them. I wouldn’t go back and undo them if I could. I guess as an actor, I regret any time I wasn’t prepared enough. Do the work to be prepared, and as a writer, it was when I chose something that I knew there was somebody out there who was more right to write it than me.
This year, I’m most looking forward to ……… rehearsals for my new Australian musical Tivoli Lovely which I’ve been workshopping and developing with the students at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
One thing I’d love to change about Victoria is …..?
I think we need a company that is entirely dedicated to creating, developing, and presenting original works with musical theatre.
The one thing I love most about Victoria is?
The proximity to nature and how much beautiful, natural environment we have in this state and so close to the city. I just think it’s a staggering beautiful place.
Originally published as “My everest”: Eddie Perfect opens up on his most epic role yet in Beetlejuice the Musical
Police hunt teens after 70-year-old Good Samaritan, boy attacked
Two teenagers are on the run and a 70-year-old Good Samaritan and 16-year-old boy waiting at a bus stop have been hospitalised in separate attacks in Melbourne's southeast.
Victoria’s worst roads revealed: Find potholes near you in mega map
The locations of thousands of dangerous potholes and road craters being reported by drivers across Victoria’s road network can finally be revealed in an exclusive map obtained by the Herald Sun.