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Arts / Rob’s looking forward to puttin’ on the show

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”… Canberra Theatre, September 3.

ROB Mills is the Australian face to “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, the big West End song-and-dance show coming to town and he couldn’t be happier.

“I’ve been busy learning the role with the band ready for the dancers coming from the UK,” he told “CityNews” by phone from Melbourne while preparing for his part in the glitzy show that brings to life the music of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and George Gershwin.

Singer Rob Mills… “I think theatre is a great place to be entertained – for me, it’s the best place.”

Mills, best-known from his days as a rising star in “Australian Idol”, joins the show for its Australian tour and it puts him in mind of “old-school movie musicals and the beautiful dancers that were in those shows”.

Think “Cheek to Cheek”, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, “Night and Day” and the title number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, which takes its name from the famous Irving Berlin song of 1927.

He’ll be on stage with a band and 30 to 40 dazzlingly-costumed dancers “doing what they do best”. This show is produced by David King, known as “the working man’s Andrew Lloyd Webber”, and it’s more of a concert than a musical, but he assures “CityNews” that it has a story.

Being centre stage as a singer is nothing new to him, but the more dramatic side of his nature, he says, was only realised at age 26 when he scored the plum role of Fiyero in the Australian production of “Wicked”. It was there, he says, he “learnt from some of the best, like Maggie Kirkpatrick. I was just a singer then, but I learnt from everyone”.

He loves the show so much that he travelled to Canberra last year for Free Rain Theatre’s revival of “Wicked”, directed by his friend Shaun Rennie.

Mills has a full book these days. He’s just played the title role in “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Melbourne, he was offered a stint with the touring “Around the World in 80 Days” and he’d like to do more comedy – “that’s a really big challenge”.

It wasn’t always like that.

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”… Canberra Theatre, September 3.

“In year 12 I dropped out of drama at school because I was too scared of what other people thought of me, but nowadays I tell kids in workshops: ‘Never mind what people think’.”

In the musicals he’s been in, such as “Legally Blonde”, “Wicked”, “Grease” and “Ghost, the Musical”, he has discovered that “it’s all about telling stories on stage, but in cabaret shows, it’s knowing when to bring the audience in, a skill you learn over time, taking the audience on a journey”.

But “Puttin’ on the Ritz” has been a learning experience, too, in finding out how to hit the highs and also the slower tempo songs, such as his favourite number, “They Can’t Take that Away from Me” by George and Ira Gershwin.

“I did that song for my Year 11 music exams. It’s the first old-school jazz song I ever learnt,” he says.

“Underneath, I’ve always been about the storytelling… people come for the escapism, the chance to reflect on times gone by.

“I think theatre is a great place to be entertained – for me, it’s the best place.”

 

“Puttin’ on the Ritz”, Canberra Theatre, 7.30pm, September 3. Bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

 

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Helen Musa

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