Bosom Buddies
Theatre Club Luncheon
Coralie Wood
Publicity
Guest Speakers:
Nancye Hayes & Todd McKenney
Compered by Bill
Stephens – Canberra City News
Bosom Buddies ACT Inc
Crowne Plaza Hotel 6
December
Report by Len Power
Coralie Wood, Canberra’s publicist extraordinaire, presented
a Theatre Club luncheon at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Civic. Part of the proceeds from the lunch went to
‘Bosom Buddies ACT Inc.’, the local charity that supports women living with
breast cancer.
The lunch was compered by Canberra City News’s Bill
Stephens. Guest speakers at the lunch
were theatre icons, Nancye Hayes and Todd McKenney who showed that they were
indeed long-time bosom buddies with a fascinating talk about their joint
theatre experiences. Both very
entertaining speakers, their stories about things going wrong on stage were
hysterically funny.
Nancye Hayes started in the chorus of the first production
of ‘My Fair Lady’ in Australia and got her big break in 1967 playing Charity
Hope Valentine in the musical, ‘Sweet Charity’.
Since then she’s been in just about every musical of importance and
continues to wow audiences with her fine performances. Off stage, she’s very friendly, approachable
and down-to-earth. She’s even had a
theatre named after her – the Hayes Theatre in Sydney.
Todd McKenney has been performing professionally since 1983
in shows such as ‘42nd Street’, ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ and ‘La Cage
Aux Folles’. He rose to fame in 1998
with his portrayal of Peter Allen in the highly successful Australian musical,
‘The Boy From Oz’. He’s a really
easy-going guy with a delightfully wicked sense of humour.
Nancye and Todd worked together in ‘42nd Street’,
‘Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks’ and the 2012 production of ‘Annie’. In that one, along with Chloe Dallimore, they
stopped the show with their performance of the song ‘Easy Street’.
During the luncheon, Nancye and Todd announced that they
will be teaming up in 2018 to perform in a new autobiographical show called,
coincidentally, ‘Bosom Buddies’. After
hearing some of their stories during lunch, this will be a show not to
miss. It will be at the Canberra Theatre
Centre in May next year.
The stars finished up their talk with a very funny,
personalized version of the song ‘You’re Getting To Be A Habit With Me’ from
‘42nd Street’. It will be
heard in their ‘Bosom Buddies’ show in 2018.
Oh, yes, and the buffet lunch at the Crowne Plaza gets a
good review from me, too. According to
Todd McKenney, Nancye Hayes was up all night making the sandwiches!