Crowds warm to Frost’s musicals
Australia’s Mister Showbiz, producer John Frost, has warmed the seats of theatres around the world for more than 30 years.
The Tony Award-winning impresario brings the curtain down on one of his greatest successes with the final performance of Wicked at the Crown Theatre tomorrow after a record-breaking Australasian run of 1978 performances over seven years.
Diehard fans from the east coast, the Philippines and Singapore have flown in for the matinee finale of Wicked, adding to the 240,000 people who have seen the tale of the two witches of Oz over its two visits to Perth.
“It will be a highly emotional closing performance,” Frost said. “I always prayed and hoped it would be successful but never imagined it would run this length of time.”
As one show bumps out, another Frost production will soon follow — the stage musical adaptation of Dirty Dancing opens at the Crown on August 2.
Frost, whose busy year has been rewarded with his name is on 20 nominations for the 2015 Helpmann Awards, said musical theatre had never looked in better health in a bumper year bookended by Perth seasons of Les Miserables and The Lion King, which opens in November.
Another tour of Cats looms in April and several other shows are pencilled in for next year, including Frost’s co-production of Jekyll and Hyde with Australian Opera.
“Going to see a musical now is cool,” Frost said.
“When you look at the shows coming through Perth now compared with 10 years ago, I would say it has doubled. That is very encouraging. It will only get stronger and stronger.”
Ticket sales were defying otherwise tough financial times, he said.
“I cannot remember a time when I was producing a show when people weren’t tightening their belts. At the end of the day, people still want to go out and have a good time.”
Two big challenges as a producer were labour costs and getting access to theatres, he said.
“The big killer in all of this is manpower. Our industry is a really labour-intensive industry. That is what pushes ticket prices up. That will never change, even with machines and technology, you still need to have actors, musicians, stage-hands and ushers.”
Frost remained continually frustrated that Perth was the only major Australian city without a lyric theatre to better sell itself as a cultural capital of the Indian Ocean rim.
He has said the 2300-seat Crown lacked the intimacy of a lyric theatre and His Majesty’s Theatre was too small to make money on big-budget shows.
If the State Government lacked the will and resources, private philanthropists should follow the lead of wealthy American arts patrons and build an arts centre in their name, he said.
“It would be a wonderful populist legacy for them. We don’t have that sort of philanthropy here which is really sad because we have a lot of seriously rich people, particularly in WA.”
Asked whether he would seek to redress the problem himself, Frost said: “I’m not rich enough to do that.”
