Hinch Showbiz

I went to the theatre last night to see a play called Australia Day. Missed the Opening Night but the reviews have been great and word-of-mouth fantastic. It’s an MTC production at the Playhouse.

It’s not often that I will use from a media release. And even more rarely that I’ll almost quote one in full. But I am excited and proud of a showbiz media release that is going out later today. Because it concerns a new musical coming to Melbourne in January.

It’s hard making a movie out of a book. Ardent Harry Potter fans know what should be happening on screen although they will occasionally, begrudgingly, suspend disbelief and allow a bit of artistic licence.

Over the weekend I nearly committed my biggest theatrical boo-boo since turning down tickets to the Opening Night of Hair in New York in 1967. Well, it was off-Broadway. And it was Joe Papp’s first non-classical endeavour and who wanted to see a bunch of long-haired full-frontal hippies mocking the American flag in the age of Aquarius.

I went to the theatre last night with former prime ministerial aspirant and former Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello. Well, I actually didn’t go with him. He sat in front of me at the Comedy Theatre for the Opening Night of Yes, Prime Minister. The stage version of the long-running and highly entertaining British TV series which started out in 1982 as Yes, Minister.

Last year’s tied Grand Final not only left footy fans with their hearts in their mouths and stunned and exhausted St. Kilda and Collingwood players sprawled all over the MCG. It also put Melbourne’s social plans into disarray.

I went to see the revival of West Side Story last night. And I realised how old I am when I knew every word of Officer Krupke. It was fifty years ago when the soundtrack of West Side Story was one of the first LPs I bought from one of my first pay cheques. The first was Ray Conniff’s Broadway in Rhythm. I go back all those decades just to prove that this wonderful musical, which opened on Broadway in 1957, has not dated.

Last night I went to the world premiere of the latest, and much-awaited, Australian movie Animal Kingdom and I want to start out by telling you what it is not.It is not Underbelly.

They held the world premiere of the latest Aussie movie Kings of Mykonos – Wog Boy 2 at the Jam Factory in Melbourne last night but the distributors Paramount Pictures were hardly the Kings of Chapel Street. The movie was meant to start at 7p.m. sharp. They said. It didn’t. They kept guests waiting in their seats an hour before it finally started at 8 o’clock – an hour late. And no explanation.

Well, as Sinatra used to sing… ‘bet your bottom dollar you’ll lose the blues in Chicago’ and that certainly applied last night in Exhibition Street –with the opening of the latest high energy version of the hit musical Chicago.

I went into a time tunnel over the weekend. Back forty, forty-five years Saturday night was the opening night of Jersey Boys. A great night. And I’ll get back to that. And then yesterday a lot of memories from forty years ago, from 1969. You may have seen the lead story in the Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun’s Focus section. I was writing my memories of the liftoff of Apollo 11 –on man’s first voyage to the surface of the moon. That was 40 years ago on July 16 and a young Hinch was there to broadcast that historic event live from Cape Kennedy.