‘I’m just unbelievably awful’: Eddie Perfect on 9 to 5, bad reviews and being an ‘old man’

Eddie Perfect is at home in Melbourne on a short break from a frantic three weeks of rehearsal for Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 The Musical. After several fumbled Zoom attempts - he’s finally on screen.

“It feels like we’re heading out of the dark ages and back into real life,” he reasons of our Zoom rustiness.

Eddie Perfect, who is starring in 9 to 5: The Musical, is worried he is moving into the Captain von Trapp stage of his career. Credit: Simon Schluter

At 44, Perfect needs little introduction. He is one of Australia’s foremost slashies - an actor/writer/singer/songwriter/comedian/guy-who-had-two-musicals-on-Broadway - yet, there’s little fuss about him. His hair is pleasingly upright - the front sticking up from the constant running of his fingers through it - and he looks remarkably relaxed for someone who’s due in front of an audience in less than a week.

There is one thing that is bothering him, though: he fears he has moved into the “old man” stage of his career. “Maybe playing older guys in musicals is where I’m heading to,” he says. “It’s quite confronting to acknowledge. I’m heading into Captain von Trapp land and I think I kinda like it.”

He’s playing the villain of the piece - Franklin Hart Jr, a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot”, who becomes the target of three disgruntled employees, Judy, Violet and Doralee, who act out their revenge fantasies on him. The show is, of course, based on the 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Parton. In the musical, it’s Casey Donovan, Marina Prior and Erin Clare who will soon have Perfect literally strung up on stage.

“No one thinks they’re an arsehole,” Perfect says of Franklin Hart Jr, who was played by a slimy Dabney Coleman in the film. “Every character has to be motivated by something that’s truthful. Otherwise, it’s just terrible to watch. So finding that is interesting, because you have to keep reminding yourself no one just says horrible things.”

Perfect in rehearsal for 9 to 5: The Musical with Casey Donovan (left) and Marina Prior. Credit:  David Hooley

What seems to motivate Hart the most, though, is trying to bed Doralee, take credit for Violet’s work and just plain ol’ belittle Judy. Even though the film is more than 40 years old, it’s social critique about women, men and workplaces is still - shockingly, depressingly - spot on.

“Everyone is dealing with stuff,” says Perfect. “It’s not simply, you know, an opportunity to just kick the shit out of men and say, ‘Men are idiots’, the women make mistakes as well. The women prejudge each other. The lead character, Violet, she prejudges Doralee because of the way she looks. So it doesn’t let anyone off scot free.

“It’s complex and interesting and varied and I guess the message is sort of solidarity, but also allowing everybody to be themselves. The only thing that’s not progressive is my character. I’m just unbelievably awful.”

Awful he may be, but at least Perfect doesn’t have to worry about it too much. He’s stepped into a ready-made musical (the show premiered on Broadway in 2008, but was revamped for its West End debut in 2019). All he has to do is say the words and sing the songs. Which is a change from Perfect’s usual trick - write the words, sing the words, act the words or, in the case of Broadway, juggle two shows at once: King Kong and Beetlejuice.

Rob McClure (from left) Kerry Butler, Sophia Anne Caruso and Alex Brightman during a performance of Beetlejuice, for which Perfect wrote the music and lyrics. Credit: AP

“It means that you go home and you don’t have to rewrite and you don’t have to wake up at 3am going, ‘This song is not right. And we need another song here,’” he says.

“I’m really enjoying that. But having the absence of that means there is a lot of time to fret about the intimate details of performance, the striving to try and nail the character or that scene. It’s very enjoyable, but I do feel total guilt about it 100 per cent of the time.”

Why?

“Because, you know, it’s sort of like, I don’t know, it’s like it’s too much of a free ride.”

So, you like waking up at 3am then?

“Oh, yeah, if I don’t feel like I’m slowly being tortured to death by the thing I’m working on, the bits that are missing or something’s not right. Which is a terrible way to be. Because I know that some people make shows and they have a really good time.”

Broadway was not always kind to Perfect - 2018’s King Kong was eviscerated by a couple of snarky New York Times and Guardian reviews (“spirit crushing” and “forgettable lyrics”), while 2020’s Beetlejuice was described by the Times as “noisy” and “absolutely exhausting”.

King Kong closed after less than a year, but Beetlejuice, for which Perfect was nominated for a Tony for best original score, came, well, back from the dead in a recovery led by superfans undeterred by the shaky reviews. It’s box office went up on the strength of repeat visits and targeting a younger audience, the soundtrack has been streamed more than 100 million times and its songs turned into TikTok hits. After its early pandemic shutdown in March 2020, the show is due to reopen on Broadway in April, and talks are apparently under way for an Australian production. Perfect, meanwhile, has just finished working with translators on a Korean version of the show. “[The lyrics] ‘welcome to a show about death’ became ‘this is one killing show’,” he says laughing.

King Kong is regarded as one of the most expensive musical flops ever.Credit:

How did he handle the bad reviews?

“You have to listen to it, he says. “You have to aggregate the criticism that comes at you. Because if you get great reviews and then just one person’s like, ‘Well, this was a piece of shit’, you can just dismiss that. But if you get five reviews, that are like, ‘This is really good, but this doesn’t make sense.’ Or you can tell from the reviews they’re not reading what it is you’re trying to say, you absolutely have to listen to that because there’s a pattern there.

“You just have to grit your teeth and read horrible things about yourself.”

Still, it hasn’t been enough to deter him. He’s working on a few unnamed Broadway projects and has been busy writing and performing in Australia since he returned with his wife and two daughters from New York at the beginning of 2020.

With a federal election looming, though, does Perfect ever feel the need to create another great Australian political musical? In 2006, he brought the house down as a fishnet stocking-clad Alexander Downer in Casey Bennetto’s musical Keating!

“I just feel like with politicians, there’s no one out there that deserves a musical, to be honest,” he says. “You’ve got to be legendary in some way to get a musical written about you. Just because you’re been here for five minutes, and you’re sort of irritating, that does not make a good musical.”

Is there a great Australian musical out there, though, one that’s just waiting to be written?

“Well, that’s a really interesting question,” he says. “I think the only reason we ever talk about the great Australian musical is because this is sort of, I don’t know, Captain Ahab and great white whale fallacy that there is the ultimate Australian musical waiting out there. It’s like the great Australian painting, it doesn’t really exist, there’s just got to be a lot of it. Of all different stripes.”

For now, though, Perfect is concentrating on 9 to 5: The Musical and trying not to think of being, you know, old.

“I’m in a cast with a bunch of people who are in their 20s and you’re like, ‘Holy shit, I’m not in my 20s any more. I’m 44.’ But you know, I’m not” - he pauses - “I’m still fit and strong, I still do everything. You can’t talk yourself out of life, you’ve just gotta go, ’Yeah, it’s hard because you look different and you feel different, and your body’s different, and your brain’s different. And we’ve also been through this pandemic, and I wonder whether there’s a lot of people out there who might have made a decision about how old they are, that might not be right.

“And now we’re merging back into life, I kind of go, ‘Who am I?’ I can still go for a run and go to the gym and have a heart attack. And I can still experience joy and love and be stupid and be silly and maybe go to the pub. Somewhere along the line I decided that I don’t go to nightclubs anymore and I’m totally fine with that.

“But I think a lot of people are like that because we had two years of not being anyone in the world and now it’s like, ‘Who am I?’ I’m just kind of back to working that all out, which is good. But I’m not that old, I’m not old.”

9 to 5: The Musical is at the Capitol Theatre until May 8.

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