By Sonia Harford
Mackenzie Dunn might well be the best antidote for anyone catastrophising about our fraught world. She has dreams. She has verve, and she has the talent to bring some of theatre’s sassiest roles to the stage.
Cast as the dopey but spirited Lily St. Regis in a new Annie production, she shares the stage with Australian luminaries such as Anthony Warlow. At 30, she has an infectious optimism, intelligence and a clear sense of her role in Australia’s music theatre scene.
Mackenzie Dunn, Debora Krizak and Keanu Gonzalez in Annie.Credit: Daniel Boud
In fact, her cheerful nature echoes the very heart of Annie’s appeal. Just as Annie brims with optimism in the grim surrounds of her 1930s orphanage, there’s something about Dunn that’s heartening amid our doomscrolling and global anxieties.
Perched in a chilly rehearsal room with a snug yellow beanie and opinions to spare, she’s a spirited advocate both for original new Australian work, and for comforting revivals.
“People still need hope. I think its good to go back to your inner child no matter what age you are, and Annie reminds us of family and of passion. We need something that’s uplifting and I think Annie is the perfect show for any age.”
Mackenzie Dunn stars in Annie.Credit: Simon Schluter
In her iconic red dress, Annie is brave and optimistic amid depression-era misery. Based originally on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie that began in the 1920s, the tale tells of mean Miss Hannigan and her brood of neglected little girls. Annie is rescued by a would-be philanthropist, Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, who offers to host an orphan for a short spell in his mansion. Escaping squalor, Annie gets a taste of luxury and love.
Inexplicably, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt makes an appearance – with a bit to say about the New Deal, a nod to Annie’s sense of fairness – and the dastardly duo of Rooster and his gold-digging girlfriend Lily set off to dupe Warbucks, and make money out of Annie’s sudden good fortune.
The original Broadway musical, created by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, opened in 1977 and blitzed that year’s Tony Awards. Chernin’s reflections very much bear out the need for hope and light in dark times.
In the early 1970s he said: “It was a cynical, depressing time, Vietnam and Nixon and riots; there was a feeling that everything was hopeless.” He’s quoted in John Bush Jones’ book Our Musicals, Ourselves, which speaks of the decade’s “malaise”.
“What she, Annie, represented simply was this organic truth of spunk, spirit, and optimism”. The dynamo in a red dress conveys a mood “grounded in Annie’s unshakeable faith that however bad things look, the sun will come out “Tomorrow.”
Among the musical’s best known numbers are Tomorrow and Easy Street performed by the scheming Lily, Rooster and Miss Hannigan.
Countless stage versions and films have nudged scenes around and played with tone – from Kristin Chenoweth’s characteristically shrill Lily, to Tim Curry’s fruity Rooster and Carol Burnett’s brilliantly comic Miss Hannigan, a drunk desperado whose slapstick lifts every scene she’s in. A 2014 version, with a bizarre turn from Cameron Diaz as Miss Hannigan, received two Golden Raspberry awards for its trouble.
In the Australian stage production, Dunn revels in the comic potential of Lily and Rooster, especially since she and co-star Keanu Gonzalez are a great team. He was Kenickie to her Rizzo in Grease. Their showstopping dance number, already getting a lot of love online, is a highlight of Annie.
If Rizzo in Grease is no pushover, and another of her past roles, Penny, is the bravest of best friends in Hairspray, Lily St. Regis is another breed of sass altogether, says Dunn.
“Lily is funny, quirky a bit of a ditz but she thinks she’s the smartest cookie in the room. To play her is so fun, she’s cartoonish in a way, larger than life. The style of a 1930s gangster dame is really fun.
‘My mother recently said ‘when you did something on stage it reminded me of Jill’.’
Mackenzie Dunn, granddaughter of Jill Perryman
“I guess she’s strong like Rizzo and bubbly and lively like Penny, but I like to find the differences in all the characters I play.”
All of which brings great pride to her grandmother, Jill Perryman, Australia’s legendary leading lady, and her grandfather Kevan Johnston.
Jill Perryman played the awful Miss Hannigan in Annie in 1978-79.Credit:
“They saw me in Grease, when we did it in Perth. It was really special for me. …My sister and I used to put on dance recitals in my grandparents’ kitchen, and my grandmother has always said as long as you’re having fun that’s the most important thing.”
Born into a theatrical dynasty, she’s also working with her mother Trudy Dunn, who is resident director on Annie. Even more remarkably, Perryman and Johnston starred in Annie in 1978.
“I’ve actually seen footage of my grandparents and Nancye Hayes who played the lead which was kind of surreal. I remember as a kid my grandparents had these massive photo albums filled with show stock photos that were all black and white. I remember seeing the Easy Street number and seeing my grandmother as Miss Hannigan.
“So when Annie came around it felt like a surreal full circle moment. My mother recently said ‘when you did something on stage it reminded me of Jill’. I’ve never seen her live, so it must be in the DNA somewhere.”
Producer John Frost reckons he sees it too. “I was very fortunate to see Jill Perryman when she originated the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl in Australia and the performance is truly embedded in my mind. I see elements of Jill in Mackenzie in her mannerisms, the way she turns and in her inflections.
“Mackenzie is unbelievably talented and it would be lovely to see her recreate the role of Fanny Brice made famous by her grandmother.”
Whether that role lies ahead depends on Dunn’s own confident career choices.
She emerged from the celebrated cradle of triple threats, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), yet her earliest roles were far from razzle-dazzle musicals. Cast in meaty roles, she initially kept the tap shoes in the cupboard.
“I did Summer of the Seventeenth Doll straight after WAAPA, which was the best jump into the deep end. I couldn’t rely on singing and dancing. I’d love to delve back into straight theatre again.
Mackenzie Dunn (centre) at rehearsals of One Day in September, which she produced and choreographed.Credit: Penny Stephens
“I’m so impatient! I’d like to do another play and a big juicy triple threat role is my bucket list priority. Also originating a role, that’s my massive dream.
“I have a great friendship with Roger Hodgman who was the director of Sondheim’s Assassins which I was in, and he took me under his wing. What I take from Roger is he always said directing is 70 per cent casting and 30 per cent trusting and moving the puzzle pieces around. So he allowed me, a young artist, to bring myself to a role, to trust my own instincts.”
This confidence led her to produce and choreograph an original stage show last year.
″One Day in September is a musical about a fictional openly gay AFL player, which I felt really passionate about. It came about because it’s really hard to get new Australian work up, especially if it’s not based on something and if you don’t have a massive star lined up. So this show came out of impatience and frustration and it went really well.”
A footy fan herself, Dunn watched players’ movements closely and choreographed a dance work – again with Gonzalez.
“I wanted to focus on music theatre as a form and also create a work so a footy fan could come and say I understand this. A lot of the male movement was actions you’d see on a footy oval, like goal umpire arms. We created a kind of language and built the movement.”
Where musicals such as Hamilton grew from a tiny seed and once seemed an improbable subject, how does original work find an audience and acclaim?
“I think about this a lot,” says Dunn. ” I look at the infrastructure in the UK and off Broadway and I also understand that for producers, it’s a money game.
“New work is a risk but I think there needs to be more opportunity under the umbrella of the big players. We have such a thriving arts culture here, we just need that little opportunity window to be opened for music theatre.
“Coming from a family where my grandmother was among Australia’s first leading ladies, it’s really important to me to build up a culture here, and I think we’re so close to more commercial successes. We have seen it with Muriel’s Wedding and King Kong and Strictly Ballroom.
“I’d like us to tell authentic new stories about Australian culture, that’s the missing piece. And people love a classic like Annie too, people want to see all of it and Australia has the talent to make this a reality.”
Annie is playing at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, and plays the Lyric Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane from December 27.
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