What made Mahalia Barnes say yes to Jesus Christ Superstar

“I’ve always been around music, and in our family pretty much everybody makes music. It’s just all different types,” says Mahalia Barnes. “I think from the earliest age I was sleeping at the side of stages in road cases.”

The cases have foam inside, she explains, so when she was really little her parents, Jane Mahoney and Cold Chisel’s Jimmy Barnes, would use the lids “and just pop me in there to sleep”.

We’re meeting a few streets away from the Princess Theatre, where the singer-songwriter is playing the role of Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. The production has made its way from Sydney, through Perth, and Barnes will be spending the next few months in Melbourne.

Mahalia Barnes is starring as Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar.Credit: Jason South

Though she lives in the Southern Highlands about an hour and a half out of Sydney, it’s clear she has been to Supernormal many times before. It’s a favourite, she explains, because it stays open through the liminal hours between lunch and dinner – which helps when you need to eat before a gig.

“Sometimes it’s just one or two of us, and sometimes it’s like 10 of us,” she says with a smile. When it’s the latter, “then we order everything pretty much.” We pick a cross-section of things to share. “The dumplings are good. The whole flounder is really delicious,” she tells me.

Barnes is warm and easygoing, the conversation springing from a story about struggling not to laugh while an on-stage mishap played out around her, to comparing our recipes for congee, to brainstorming how to engineer a more effective swimming cap. When photographer Jason South arrives I ask how she is with having her picture taken. “I remember from a really young age, doing photo shoots and interviews and TV, so it’s sort of always been pretty normal for me.”

Shark Bay scallops roasted in kelp butter at Supernormal.Credit: Jason South

The food begins to arrive, starting with a pair of scallops. “Do you want lemon on it?” she asks, before serving us both.

There was only a very brief window of time when Barnes considered a different kind of career. She was seven. “I thought I might be an Olympic swimmer,” she says. “I really loved swimming, I would train, and then I never grew much – I’m five foot one [155 centimetres].”

It was around this age that she and her younger siblings started performing more formally – first with their father, then as a group called the Tin Lids. She’s quick to clarify that the band skewed more towards the fun than the serious. “I say this all the time, but we were no Jackson Five. We were just kids, do you know what I mean? But everyone we knew was making music, so we thought, well, why don’t we get to do that?”

Her family is never far from her mind. I quickly learn that both her parents are excellent cooks, that her eldest daughter is following in her footsteps as a singer-songwriter, and that her husband, fellow musician Ben Rodgers, is also a skilled photographer.

“We’ve got a massive family. There’s lots of us. With my mum and dad, there’s four of us, and I’m the oldest of the four – but I’ve got older half-siblings as well, who I’m also close with, but didn’t grow up in the same way with.”

Zaru soba noodles, seared tuna, bonito-infused aged soy.Credit: Jason South

I don’t know if Barnes would agree with my assessment of her as easygoing. Both she and her mother are eldest children, and she feels that there is a certain personality type that goes along with that. “I take on a lot of responsibility, whether it’s mine or not. I feel the need to manage all the situations. But really, it’s just that I’m a control freak,” she says with a laugh.

“I think that there was a lot of responsibility for me growing up with my siblings as well, just because of the way our lifestyle was. We’re a very close family, so I’m lucky – it’s not a weight that I’m unwilling to have.”

As we leisurely make our way through the different small dishes, Barnes makes it feel like she has all the time in the world when in reality her life is a careful juggling act of work, family and a collision of the two. She and her husband are raising two daughters aged eight and 15 while also touring regularly. As a musician, she performs solo and with her band, while also taking on projects like her current role. On days off from Jesus Christ Superstar she’ll arrange gigs or work on other projects. I’m just about to ask how she navigates all this when she says,“I also manage my dad – but he works more than I do.”

Barnes worked as her father’s tour manager for many years before slowly transitioning into her current role. “It was a gradual progression,” she explains. It can be tricky, trying to navigate the personal and the professional.

Mahalia Barnes as Mary Magdalene and Michael Paynter as Jesus in the Melbourne production of Jesus Christ Superstar.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

“There’s definitely some moments that are testing. We get along very, very well, and I think that where it works in this role is that [my mum and dad] know that no one could possibly care more than I do as his child,” she reflects. “Some days when I have to tell them something they don’t want to hear, that’s always ... no one really wants to be told what to do by their child.” Being family makes her both the most qualified and the least qualified she reflects. “So it’s going well, but it’s a lot. It’s hard.” And, she adds, with her eldest daughter now starting to release music, “suddenly we’re in a position where Ben and I are managing her too, essentially”.

It seems fitting that Barnes explains how she navigates her intense schedule while also casually dissecting and serving out the flounder, something she makes look effortless, but which 10 minutes later I learn is far from the case. As I tentatively cut into it with a spoon she looks on with a quiet concern and I apologise for possibly mangling it. (“No, no,” she reassures me. “It’s just that that’s the difficult part, because there’s all the little bones”.) The sauce that comes with the fish is a particular favourite – and one that she and her husband have (unsuccessfully, she adds) attempted to replicate at home.

Food, she explains, is one of her love languages. “Food and music.” Whenever she can, she cooks for her friends and family. On the set of Jesus Christ Superstar on days when they are performing two shows she will duck out to find some kind of treat to bring back to share with everyone to boost morale and energy.

The bill at Supernormal.Credit:

Though she has been approached to take part in musicals previously, Jesus Christ Superstar is the first one she’s said yes to. “As an artist, I would say I’m more of a blues, soul, rock ’n’ roll type singer. And part of what I love and am drawn to about that sort of music is the freedom of expression and the spontaneity and the improvisation and all of those things that maybe don’t really fit into the musical theatre world.”

Barnes chose this musical because it resonated with her – partly because of the music itself and partly because as part concert, part theatrical production, it didn’t hew too closely to more traditional musical theatre. She feels there’s more flexibility in the story for musicians to express themselves.

With lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jesus Christ Superstar started as a concept album in 1970 and, following the success of the music, was developed into a Broadway production the following year. It tells the story of Jesus and Judas, with the narrative dissecting themes of fame, love, power and betrayal. Going into the musical, Barnes’ initial read on her character was that “it felt a little bit too passive, for my liking, a little bit too, I guess, gentle, a little bit weak”.

On paper, Mary Magdalene’s role in the musical is a conciliatory one. She tends to Jesus and interrogates her own emotions. Barnes was keen to bring “a little bit more strength” to the role. “I’m not coming out there trying to change the character drastically, but just trying to maybe reinterpret and understand that the ‘being gentle’ approach doesn’t have to equal weak.”

When I see the show a few days later, it’s clear she has succeeded. Barnes’ Mary is both calming and fierce, holding her own in the quiet battle between herself and Judas.

She points to the tension that runs through the story. “Mary’s role is to come in and sort of settle that down a little bit and bring a little bit of calm to the group, to Jesus, and try and bring that to the community,” she reflects. “I mean literally I come in and say everything’s all right, you know.”

While she’s enjoying her time performing Jesus Christ Superstar, she doesn’t know if that means there are more musicals in her future. “I think it’d have to be the right show,” she says. “I can’t see myself auditioning for Cats or anything like that,” she adds with a smile.

This show was the right one at the right time, the music and the character providing a canvas to bring different facets of her life and experience together. “Coming into it, for me, I was drawing on my experience as a mother, as a tour manager, as a manager, as a band leader, as an elder sibling.”

Jesus Christ Superstar is on at the Princess Theatre until June 22.

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