This was published 3 years ago
The COVID-19 chat show that digs deep with big names
By Cameron Woodhead
VARIETY
Big Night In with John Foreman ★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, September 23
Audiences may recall The Big Night In with John Foreman from its brief stint on free-to-air in 2006. Like most arts-based television in this country, the program was short-lived… but memorable, inside its familiar late-night chat-and-variety format, for carrying unusually in-depth interviews with Australian performers.
John Foreman chats to Eddie Perfect for Big Night In.
Arts Centre Melbourne was quick to revive a digital incarnation when everything went pear-shaped for the industry in March. It has proved a welcome celebration of the vibrancy and achievement of our most talented performers.
Foreman never shied away from big names – the original series kicked off by interviewing Russell Crowe – and in the latest episode he launches into an engaging longform interview with Eddie Perfect.
The actor, composer, lyricist and musical theatre star has most recently achieved international acclaim writing musicals for Broadway and the West End. Now grounded in Melbourne lockdown, Perfect conveys some of the excitement and madness of his success, but he also traces a largely nostalgic arc, reflecting on the city that shaped his career.
The moment catches Perfect in an introspective mood: candidly downplaying his own strength as a performer and saying he prefers writing and composing. That will sound strange to anyone who saw the onstage dynamite of his early satirical cabarets, or Shane Warne the Musical, or even the song cycle in honour of his native Mentone, and we get flashback footage to remind us of them.
Eddie Perfect performs for Big Night In.
Nor does it jibe with a fitting finale where Perfect, accompanied by the Australian Pops Orchestra, performs his song A Place By The River. That stirring, poignant hymn to the Yarra, composed for the reopening of Hamer Hall in 2012, might be just the morale-boost Melbourne needs right now.
Other Melbourne guests include Bernadette Robinson, who sings One Perfect Day and discusses the international tour of the hit show, Songs For Nobodies, Joanna Murray-Smith wrote for her.
And Geraldine Hickey – who remains "carry-over champion" of the Piece of Wood Award (the Comics’ Choice prize at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival) – is a picture of stoic amiability on the state of stand-up comedy.
Not all attempts at uplift come off: Gretel Killeen’s shambolic effort – which is like watching an armchair psychologist turning into a Play School host – feels more patronising for being streamed from the relative freedom of Sydney.
Still, Big Night In offers an attractive mix of entertainment and longform arts journalism and – though it seems a strange niche for a chat show to occupy – a lifeline connecting artists and audiences separated by the pandemic.
Episodes can be streamed at artscentremelbourne.com.au.