African Queen comes to the stage

Memories of Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart will flood back when African Queen is performed on stage at Don Russell Performing Arts Centre on Saturday 21 March at 8pm.

This unique chamber opera production, based on the classic 1951 film, features two of Perth’s most accomplished musical theatre performers – Ann Adlem (Irene, Me and My Girl) and Ian Toyne (Irene, South Pacific).

It also combines the creative talents and broad experience of librettist John Senczuk, composer Tim Cunniffe and director John Milson, the former head of Musical Theatre at the WA Academy of Performing Arts.

Award-winning instrumental group Tetrafide Percussion provides live accompaniment in this scaled-back opera version of the story, originally from a CM Forster novel.

As the impact of World War I reaches the African jungle, Charlie Allnut (Toyne), a disreputable Cockney mechanic and spinster missionary Rose Sayer (Adlem), are thrown together by chance.

Deeply incompatible and fighting heat, malaria and bullets, they make their escape down the treacherous Ulanga River on a steamboat called The African Queen.

Toyne’s last performance at The Don was the hilarious 2008 hit Boris and Costia Alive in Vegas! He has since played the lead in the MS Society production of South Pacific and in Perth Theatre Company’s Baby Boomer Blues, which will tour nationally this year.

Experienced Australian performer Adlem has performed in numerous West End musicals including Les Miserables, Whistle Down the Wind and Phantom of the Opera as Madame Giry. Adlem has also toured Japan in Beauty and the Beast and starred in several operas, musicals and operetta in Australia.

“Chamber opera of this calibre has much to offer Perth; bring on some more.”
– Rosalind Appleby, The West Australian