Meet Miss Honey

Have you ever had a teacher you adored? Elise McCann has, and now she has the chance to play one in the Australian premiere of Matilda the Musical, now playing in Sydney. It has been a stellar time for the performer, who toured Australia in a cabaret based on the life of Lucille Ball and is soon to appear as Peter Allen’s sister in the tele-movie about his life. David Spicer reports.

It is a lot to live up to. As novelist Roald Dahl put it, “ Miss Jennifer Honey was a mild and quiet person who never raised her voice and was seldom seen to smile, but there is no doubt she possessed that rare gift for being adored by every small child under her care.”

I asked Elise McCann for a report card on the four Matildas during rehearsals. Their parents would be pleased.

“The Matildas are so excited but focused. They know their stuff,” she beams. “But all have a different energy. They are so supportive of each other.

“They are all sharing parts. Saying Go Molly. Go Sasha.  You can’t help fall in love with them.

“Bella is incredibly still. Molly’s brain is going to explode any second. Georgia is like sunshine. Sasha is gorgeous and focussed.”

So what does Elise make of Miss Honey? In a nutshell “more than just a beautiful character.” She says it’s a “joy” to be able to draw on the depth of understanding and back story that comes from the novel.

“You know what I love about Miss Honey? It’s that she is so fragile but inherently she is so strong. She was described as being so fragile that if someone was to blow on her she would fall over. But whenever she is petrified and fearful of the principal, Miss Trunchbull, in the classroom and surrounded by her children, Miss Honey has an automatic response. She steps up to protect the children. She can’t help herself because has this inner love of children and learning.”

Elise’s favourite moment in the musical is the second time you see Miss Honey. “It is just her in the classroom with the children. It is her joy place.”

In the classroom she gives Matilda a hug.

“She says, Matilda this is the biggest hug in the world. You are going to hug all the air out of me. And Matilda hugs her even tighter.”

Elise had a similar relationship with one of her own teachers.

“In year one Mrs Fitzpatrick was so fun. She made everything a game. Every person was really important. She gave me my pen licence once I had learnt to write cursive and had adequate spelling. She read a book every Friday and used voices. I remember thinking she was amazing.”

Now Elise says she is learning a lot working with the Royal Shakespeare Company on Matilda, particularly their attention to detail and character.

“It is my most exciting experience as an actor. The team we are working with have degrees of information that is off the chart.”

And speaking of charts, the biggest challenge appears to be the music, which she describes as “amazing”, but as it is “written by Tim Minchin there are a lot of lyrics, a lot of difficult rhythms and dissonance. So a lot of the notes clash and also, because Tim is a man, it sits in a place in the break of a lot of women’s voices. It happens to be not on my break. A lot break about b or c, I break a little higher.”

But it means that many women will find performing this role a bit like torture.

Elise managed to get some first-hand advice when she saw Matilda on Broadway and spoke to the actress playing her part.

“I met Alison Luff backstage. I had been given my script a day before. It was quite fresh and bizarre to see a show I was about to embark on. Matilda was heart-breaking and hilarious.”

The novel has many lines in it than can inspire performing artists.

Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...”

Elise applied this ethos last year during her national tour of the cabaret Everyone Loves Lucy.  The American actress/comedienne was a pioneer for women on television and playing Lucy was “one of my biggest challenges.”

“I’ve had to be as brave as she was. That sort of comedy does not work unless you give it 150%. You have to be very honest also.”

Lucille Ball “was hilarious obviously, but also very brave for a woman in the 1950’s and 60s, not to be afraid to look ugly or look the fool.

“She was a career woman. She thought it was OK to look ugly, do her hair crazily, have a pie thrown in her face, not have to be the beautiful siren (traditionally) on TV.”

The show received good reviews and there are plans for more outings in the future perhaps even in the US.

Stage Whispers’ Neil Litchfield described it as more of a short play with music than a cabaret.

“Everybody Loves Lucy dives far deeper into physical comedy, recreating Lucy’s uncanny genius with zest, while touchingly portraying the deep underlying pathos of the classic clown, revealed beautifully as the very real humanity and vulnerability of the woman, wife and mother behind the performer.”

Like Lucille Ball, Elise McCann can speak at a hundred miles an hour. As bright as a button, she got into Law and NIDA (Music Theatre) when she did her HSC.

“My mother said I should go to NIDA.”

Originally published in the July / August 2015 Edition of Stage Whispers - Read more