A Very (S)Pacific Role

Actor Nick Simpson-Deeks talks to Coral Drouyn about Sondheim and Melbourne’s first full production of Pacific Overtures.

When Nick Simpson-Deeks was growing up in a small town near Tamworth he had no idea where life would lead him. “I simply knew that it was “somewhere”…and somewhere further than Tamworth,” he tells me. Nick acted in school plays and, being too slight for more aggressive sports, took dancing and singing lessons. “I was an anomaly in a country town, a small kid who liked the Arts.” Nick watched musicals on video but the thought of making a career of it was alien to him. He saw it initially as a fantastic “hobby”, one which would break the monotony of a ‘day job’, though he had no idea what that day job would be. Then, for his sixteenth birthday, his parents took him to Sydney and he saw Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and from that moment there was no doubt in his mind what he wanted. “I just had to do Sondheim. His music made a connection with me that night, and it’s part of the reason I have a love/hate relationship with Musical Theatre. So much of it doesn’t speak to me at all.”

Such were Nick’s talents that, straight from school he was accepted into NIDA’s Acting course and WAAPA’s Music Theatre course. “I picked NIDA because I knew I didn’t want to end up forever in the ensemble, and I needed a strong set of acting skills,” Nick explains. Those strong skills he developed in NIDA led to further studies in New York and some stage work before landing a breakthrough television role in two series of SBS multi-award winning The Circuit. “It was a wonderful part, but very intense….not exactly all singing/all dancing,” Nick says. It opened the door to other television and film work and Nick was making quite a name for himself on the small screen. But when Nick heard that Jersey Boys was coming to Australia, he knew he had to audition. “I loved The Four Seasons records. My Mum had them and used to play them when I was very young, so infectious.”

Nick was cast as Franki Valli but then tragedy struck….a mysterious coughing disease, which was uncontrollable, left him debilitated. “It seems pretty certain, in retrospect, that it was Whooping Cough. I hadn’t been inoculated against it. It did more than take me out of the show, it destroyed my confidence and left me depressed that I might never sing again and certainly would never get another shot at a role like that.” So Nick put all of his energy into television, with a running role on Winners, Losers and even some interesting parts in feature films. But when he heard that new production company Watch This, in tandem with Forty-Five Downstairs, were mounting a professional production of Sondheim’s Assassins he knew he had to make himself known to them. He got the role, and the season was a sellout. Nick had fulfilled his dream to play Sondheim.

While Assassins is moving into a second regional touring season this year, Watch This were planning their next foray, a full production of Sondheim’s little seen Pacific Overtures. It’s never had a professional outing in Melbourne so Sondheim fans are salivating. “It’s not an easy show,” Nick explains. “It’s trans-ethnic, transgender and trans Eastern and western music. It’s fair to say that Sondheim fans love it and in fact it’s Sondheim’s favourite amongst his shows.” It wasn’t a huge hit, running only six months on Broadway in 1976, but being nominated for a massive 10 Tony Awards – even a short season Broadway revival in 2004 earned 4 Tony nominations. The story is about the Westernisation of Japan in the mid 19^th century….told from a Japanese perspective. Nick plays the narrator. “The music is just marvellous,” says Nick. “It’s a dream role for me and though it is sophisticated and very ambitious, Sondheim fans expect that. Right now I couldn’t be happier. With the Assasins tour this will make two Sondheim shows in the one year for me. I feel very, very fortunate.

Pacific Overtures will open at Theatreworks in St Kilda on Feb 19^th.

More Reading

More details on the production of Pacific Overtures.

Musicals in 2014 and Beyond.