One woman, five divas

Feeling her lack of a public profile was holding her back from landing the plum roles she desired, accomplished singer and entertainer Bernadette Robinson took matters into her own hands and approached acclaimed playwright Joanna Murray-Smith with a simple request: write me a one-woman show.

“The gall of me! And I’m not at all that sort of person,” Robinson cackled.

“I’m predominantly a singer, but I’ve always felt I could do acting. I wrote Joanna a letter asking her to write something for me. She’s very straightforward, so she said, ‘I don’t know if you can act, and I don’t know if I want to write something about all these singers, because their stories have been done to death’.

“But I got her to write one monologue.”

‘All these singers’ were Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, Maria Callas and Billie Holiday — a collection of doomed divas Robinson’s made a career out of impersonating.

When Murray-Smith saw her leading lady’s skill, one monologue became five and the resulting show, Songs For Nobodies, debuted to a rapturous reception — and several season extensions — at the Melbourne Theatre Company last November.

“Every night I’d get emails from people saying stuff like ‘I’ve been a subscriber for 20-odd years and this is the best show I’ve ever seen’,” Robinson enthused.

The ‘nobodies’ of the show’s title are the women — maids, cleaning ladies and reporters among them — who, through their interactions with the ‘famous five’, help bridge the gap between the myth of fame and the harsh reality. Ever effacing,

Robinson had her own theory as to how Murray-Smith arrived at the title.

“Someone asked me why the show’s called Songs For Nobodies. I told them it’s because I’m the nobody.”

info: Songs for Nobodies, The Playhouse, August 4 – 14. www.songsfornobodies.com Photo: Jeff Busby