Yes, I was lucky and had fantastic opportunities, both here and overseas. Two Snowy River films and Phar Lap were responsible for my love of horses and riding, which is right up there with music, and allowed me to make a name internationally. “I had the right look for the time, young with baby-faced innocence, and I was in fact in my twenties when the fame and fortune (such as it was) hit me. The next thing he knew he was an actor, graduating in 1976. Tom concedes he might have tried musical theatre as his platform for performing, but a friend had applied to NIDA to do drama and Tom auditioned with him. I never thought all three would be so much a part of my life.”Īfter years of singing along with Sinatra records, Burlinson discovered in his teens that he sounded like his idol, but he didn’t have the confidence to make his voice public. We’re all influenced by our parents’ likes and dislikes, but I just gravitated to that music. I was obsessed with music from the forties and fifties - swing, musicals, crooners. It was the mid-sixties and I really wasn’t into the whole Beatles/Rolling Stones thing. “I loved it,” he says with enthusiasm, “and I was absolutely hooked. His very first role on stage was as Colonel Pickering In My Fair Lady at Mosman Primary School. “The fact that Jason and I are sharing the role, each playing in different states, and that Jason’s Dad, with whom I had worked, and the two of us are now tied together by the same role is just a little bit spooky,” he explains. Of course, Australia has a small pool of actors compared to the U.S or Britain, but many of them never cross paths or share roles, let alone have their careers intertwined. “I don’t know if it’s the six degrees thing, or the planets aligning, or just fate, but it certainly seems something more than just coincidence.” “It’s quite extraordinary how things evolve,” Tom told me. And who had a supporting role in The Man from Snowy River? You’ve guessed it, Terry Donovan, AKA Billy Flynn. The Man from Snowy River was Australia’s biggest film production ever, and although Kirk Douglas was the obligatory overseas star, it was Tom and that famous downhill ride that took the world by storm. Tom had appeared with Terry in Cop Shop, having made his mark as Mickey Pratt in The Restless Years. Just prior to Chicago, Terry Donovan was appearing regularly on our screens in Cop Shop, and so was a young actor called Tom Burlinson, who had just signed a major movie contract to star in the title role of The Man from Snowy River – a role which made him an international star. Brought up by Terry, it seemed inevitable that he would also turn to acting, but it’s hard to imagine that he would ever have contemplated following so literally in his father’s footsteps as to play the same role in the same show thirty-eight years later.īut the synchronicity doesn’t end there. Jason was barely into his teens when the Sydney Theatre Company production started its tour, but he was already a seasoned actor, particularly on television. Fast forward to 2019 (a different millennium): Chicago has returned to our stages and, in a first, Jason Donovan is returning from London to play the role his father originated in Australia for the Melbourne season. That might all seem like musical trivia, if it weren’t for the “six degrees of separation” rule. It was a revelation for all of us as a show and it is regularly revived to great acclaim. The two stars, Nancye Hayes and Geraldine Turner, were at the height of their performing prowess, and the foil between them was Terry Donovan (whom we had all watched and loved on the telly in Division 4) as the opportunistic and hustling lawyer, Billy Flynn. That’s way back before many of our current crop of performers were even born. We measure our lives by milestones, and it’s hard for those of us who are Music Theatre Tragics to believe that Chicago first hit our stages back in 1981, some six years after it premiered on Broadway. In August 2019, just before Chicago began its Australian tour, Tom Burlinson, who plays Billy Flynn, took time out from rehearsals to talk to Coral Drouyn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |