Once a Gypsy

Music Theatre and dance diva Caroline O’Connor feels Australian down to her bootlaces. Yet more than any other performer she has been a true gypsy, travelling the world stage to rave reviews, rarely calling anywhere home. Coral Drouyn caught up with her on the eve of her opening as Mama Rose in Gypsy.

When Caroline O’Connor was just eleven years old in Sydney she would come home from school while her parents were still at work and let herself in. Like so many latchkey kids she put on her favourite record. It was an original cast recording of Ethel Merman in Gypsy and Caro would sing along with ‘Rose’s Turn’. She couldn’t have known that she would end up playing Mama Rose in 2010 in England, or that she will star in The Production Company’s Gypsy at Arts Centre Melbourne in July.

Born in England to Irish parents, brought up in Australia, and now touring the world, she followed the English production with a spell on Broadway and was delicious in the recent Tony Awards telecast.

Caroline has always been something of a gypsy. “At one stage, when I said I was Australian, my father was adamant that I was Irish,” she told me when we got a chance to talk recently. Despite her telling her father that she had never even been to Ireland so how could she be Irish, he wouldn’t listen. “I remember him saying, A cat can have kittens in a chip shop, but that doesn’t make them fish.” It’s such an Irish thing to say, and makes perfect sense to anyone with Irish blood.

When Caroline first started dancing, it was Irish dancing. Maybe her dad would claim it was in her genes but she was so good at it she won competitions and her parents moved to Sydney where she would have access to better teachers. Later, when she saw her first ballet, she decided she wanted to switch to classical training and harangued her mother until she gave in. But after four weeks she wanted to give up and walked away….only to return a few months later.

The same discipline she railed against initially was what brought her back. She went to England to study and might have become “just” another ballerina until Anthony Warlow told her she had too much personality for classical roles and she should try musicals. “And I did, because at last there was a chance to sing. I had always been shy and was terrified at first singing at auditions. I knew I could get through a dance audition; I felt confident with that. Singing was as much a part of me as dancing, but it was something I did alone. It was from my heart and for my soul.”

You can hear from her tone as she speaks just how much this means to Caroline.

The rest is Musical Theatre history…and Caroline started her life on the road as a gypsy in the truest sense, rarely in one place for more than a few months. It speaks volumes of how much travelling she has done over the past 30 years that she only became an Australian citizen in 2007.

“I always thought of myself as Australian, told everyone I was Australian, got jobs and got reviews as an Australian. Then, coming back to Australia a few years ago they said, ‘Sorry, your Resident’s Visa has expired,’ and denied me entry. It was my own fault. I’d just been too busy, but I was devastated to think I wasn’t seen as a proper Australian. So I applied for citizenship, and took the oath, and got very emotional about becoming officially what I had always been in my heart.”

Life on the road was never less than exciting, and everywhere she went there were rave reviews. There were London and West End shows like Mack and Mabel, West Side Story and Chicago, and Broadway and other major American cities, with Assassins, Follies and Chicago again and, last year, A Christmas Story (Caroline had to go back into training for the heavy tap routines, but she stopped the show just the same).

She even played in Sweeney Todd in Paris, where Stephen Sondheim declared her the best Mrs Lovett he had ever heard (move over Angela). Plus there were the trips back to Australia for Man of La Mancha and Funny Girl. Then there were her fantastic one-woman shows, her fabulous tributes to Piaf, Merman and Garland and film appearances like Moulin Rouge and De-Lovely.

There’s even a CD I am blessed to own (one of four she’s released) which she signed for me about 15 years ago.

Caroline the actress was the next of her many talents to surface. We know that the great Music Theatre roles are acting roles too, but both David Williamson (Scarlett O’Hara at the Crimson Parrot) and Joanna Murray-Smith (Bombshells) wrote plays especially for her enormous talent.

She is by far our most lauded, most award-winning stage performer of this century. And yet, I asked her, is there some role she hasn’t played in musical theatre. “I think I’m ready for Kiss Of The Spiderwoman,” she tells me. “That would be really interesting. I’m not sure how many bums on seats we would get though.” I assure her that I would buy a ticket and ask if there is a straight acting role she yearns to play. “You’ll think I’m crazy,” she says with a chuckle. “I’d love to do The Lion in Winter. I love the film and so I read the play. Eleanor of Aquitane is the most wonderful role. But I’m no Eleanor physically, no Katharine Hepburn. I’m too small; no-one would ever give me that part.”

Small maybe, but Caroline O’Connor is a giant amongst performers and I for one am so glad she’s coming home and we get to see her again. 

Gypsy plays at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, from July 6 - 14, 2013

Originaly published in the July / August 2013 edition of Stage Whispers

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