‘She just conjured electricity’: Celebrating Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett

Before Madonna talked sex and sexuality on stage, a working-class girl on the other side of the globe was shocking audiences with her fierce and powerful performances.

Chrissy Amphlett was unlike anything Australians had seen when she burst on the stage in 1980 as lead singer of the Divinyls. Without her it’s hard to imagine Amy Taylor from Amyl & the Sniffers, or Amphlett’s fellow Geelong-born rocker Adalita.

Chrissy Amphlett in the 1982 film Monkey Grip.Credit:

A new show opening next week called Amplified showcases the work of the late artist – Amphlett died from breast cancer in 2013, aged just 53 – as well as her extraordinary impact and legacy.

Making the work has been a wonderful process, says Sheridan Harbridge, who stars in the show, and co-created it with acclaimed director Sarah Goodes and musical director Glenn Moorhouse (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

Trawling through YouTube watching old performances by the Divinyls and Amphlett solo, Harbridge says there are hundreds of comments from people, writing things such as “I saw them at the Crystal Ballroom and it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen”.

Sheridan Harbridge stars as the late Chrissy Amphlett in Amplified.Credit: Simon Schluter

“And then women saying, ‘I’d never seen a woman act like that and I didn’t know you could’,” the actor-singer-writer says, adding “equally for men, they were watching something quite electric”.

“I spoke to someone who worked with her and they said, ‘she just conjured electricity’.”

Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Gippsland, Harbridge wasn’t allowed to watch shows like The Simpsons and The Golden Girls, but thankfully her mum didn’t know what Rage was, so that was where she first came across Amphlett.

“Even outside church we were still in an era where women’s bodies were taboo; no one used the correct terminology, it was all code words. Talking about masturbation and self-love was so fresh … Madonna’s really erotic era had not come out yet … I saw [Amphlett] on Rage and it was like whhaaaat!”

Chrissy Amphlett in her Divinyls heyday.Credit:

The show is not straight theatre, it’s cabaret. Harbridge is something of a narrator, setting the scene for the era: the crowd, the fashion, the language, the anticipation and then the explosion of this extraordinary performer onto the stage. It’s the story of an artist compelled to make work, she says, and of what it was like being a woman at that time.

Anyone who saw Harbridge in shows such as Prima Facie or A Streetcar Named Desire is familiar with her star power; what they may not realise is how well she sings.

She doesn’t emulate Amphlett in the show – that would not be possible, she says.

“If you can’t recreate it then you’re going to try to open it up and let it flow in a different way for the audience,” Harbridge explains, adding that it’s been about getting down deep into the lyrics of Amphlett’s songs. “Which is something she would have been doing at this part of her career. It’s been a beautiful way to dig into it, with songs that are really about story and her spirit.”

Sarah Goodes.

Goodes agrees. Having directed the plays Sunday – about Heide founder and philanthropist Sunday Reed – and Julia, about former PM Julia Gillard, she has learnt much about trying to do justice to someone’s life.

“There’s always this weird dance that you have to do because people hold these stories close; there’s almost an ownership,” Goodes says. “With Chrissy there’s this enormous ownership. And you can’t be her, all you can do is to capture the atom. It’s an imagination of her.”

Recent documentaries about John Farnham and Midnight Oil celebrate those artists, says Goodes, and underline how much we like looking back. It’s critical we tell stories about significant women in our history, too, she says.

Moorhouse says musically, the team went through and identified key songs that would work with the narrative. The day we meet he’s been creating an acoustic, pared-back version of the Divinyls’ Science Fiction. He heads up the show’s band, which includes Ben Cripps, David Hatch, Clarabell Limonta and Gary Watling.

Amplified is the first work made by Jacaranda Productions, created with University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC), with support from Geelong Arts Centre. Goodes and actor and producer Diana Glenn joined forces to form Jacaranda “to give good stories the life they deserve, finding each new work the right team then the right home, whether that be stage, screen or audio”, says Goodes.

Born in 1959, Amphlett began performing in her teens and busked her way around Europe. She formed Divinyls with guitarist Mark McEntee in 1980; with various line-up changes they would play and tour for the next decade and were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006. Amphlett also performed in musicals, including playing Judy Garland in The Boy from Oz.

Goodes has loved going down the rabbit hole exploring the life and times of Christina Amphlett, whom this masthead referred to as the First Lady of Australian Rock in an early review of Divinyls.

As Goodes says: “You can see why people are enamoured by her, so still in her spell.”

Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett is at the University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC) from June 11 to 13, part of RISING. See www.umac.melbourne.