Gretel To The Metal

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 30th July, 2008

With the heady, often controversial days of Big Brother far behind her, Gretel Killeen has embarked on the next chapter of her life. By day she’s writing her next novel, by night she’s treading the boards as The Narrator in the riotous stage musical The Rocky Horror Show.

But she has a confession to make – she can’t sing or dance.

“I’ve never even been in a musical before. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I was in a musical at school once. I played the Pied Piper and the rest of the class played rats!” laughs Gretel. “But I really feel privileged to have this experience, because it’s not very often that you get an insight into a completely different world and get to live there for a little while. I’m loving being amongst a group of people who are so talented.”

She’s spot on. The cast is a showcase of the cream of Australian musical theatre talent and includes rock legend iOTA as Frank-N-Furter, the incandescent Paul Capsis as Riff Raff, Tamsin Carroll as Magenta and Sharon Millerchip as Columbia – a role she just received a Helpmann Award for.

In some ways Gretel’s role as the Narrator is oddly familiar. Afterall, she is narrating a show about a house of horrors, sex and scandal. The irony isn’t lost on her – she describes it as a fantastic co-incidence.

“Thankyou for noticing that!” she laughs, adding that she believes the show is just as potent now as it was when it was first performed. “Sometimes I hear people say things like ‘well, it’s not Chekhov’ and I think, this is a musical that’s lasted 35 years! Thousands of people still go to see it every single week! It’s about everything that a more traditional, serious, earnest play would touch on – it’s about relationships, and I love that.

“People assume that in the last 35 years we’ve been progressive, but this is still a really interestingly confronting show to some people. I think it’s wonderful that we can revisit these old stories and still see them as totally valid, but at the same time it’s extraordinary that we haven’t pushed so many of these barriers or concepts, we haven’t developed them much further. A lot of the stigmas and prejudices still exist.”

Mardi Gras has been one of the major forces in Australia that has sought to push such things forward. Many would remember that Gretel hosted the 2002 Mardi Gras coverage on Channel Ten, but far more memorable was her appearance in the Parade itself, on a float with some of the girls from TV talk show Beauty And The Beast.

“We were all dressed as African princesses, it was all beautifully choreographed, we had help from these beautiful boys, but we’d rehearsed it on a still surface. Needless to say, once we were on a flat top truck lurching down Oxford Street there were people flying all over the place!” she laughs. “And those beautiful boys, who had paid us undying attention while we were rehearsing, once they heard the screaming crowd they abandoned us! There we were, these five forlorn African princesses trying to find a beat on a rollicking truck!”

Gretel won’t be following Rocky Horror when it moves to Melbourne in September. “I wish I could, but I’m a single mother and my daughter is sitting her HSC exams and I need to be here for that.” So after seven busy years of public appearances and commercial television, not to mention motherhood, Gretel is reveling in being able to, as she puts it, “hit the pause button”. She’s using her spare time to finish work on a novel that ironically explores the way we use – or perhaps don’t use – our spare time.

“I am fascinated by the fact that our western society is so dominated by depression and people feeling lost and useless, that with the extra time that our luxurious lives have given us we seem to spend that time worrying,” she explains. “Basically the main character in the book realises that the happiest person they’ve ever met is also really stupid, so they decide to make that person their guru. It’s a book about finding happiness, and not over-thinking things… But don’t over-think that.”

The Rocky Horror Show closes in Sydney on August 17. It will tour nationally, the next stop being Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre, 240 Exhibition Street, from September 12.

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