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JockO'Keefe (OX 1959) speaks with Andrew McClelland (OX 1997)
Monday, 26 September 2022
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JOKWhen you were in your final grades at Xavier did you confide to the Vocational Guidance Officer you wanted to pursue a career in show business? Where and when did the lure of grease paint appeal? AMC I remember in Year 11 we had some computer data analysis thing at Xavier which looked at our subjects and marks and gave corresponding possible future careers. Amongst the likes of Real Estate Agent and Jesuit one of my highlighted possible career paths was Ventriloquist. I never bothered to buy a talking puppet, but I did wonder whether my passion for taking part in everything theatrical that Xavier had to offer could possibly lead to a career. Luckily Xavier was one of the only schools which offered both Theatre Studies and Drama in Year 12. Without those opportunities I may well have gone into the aforementioned Real Estate (not that there’s anything wrong with that,) although I never had the level of dedication for a divine calling. Eventually the Vocational Guidance Officer did counsel against ventriloquism, they never told me comedy was a bad choice and I went for it! JOK Where there are laughs, you'll find the reason why - Andrew McClelland is in the house. Of the comedic spectrum where do you get your greatest creative kicks? Is it stand-up comedy, DJ, writing, or just playing silly buggers? AMC The biggest kicks for me are playing well in front of big crowds. Having over 10,000 people at Rod Laver Arena dance to my tunes whilst supporting Cher made for a truly electric atmosphere. That said, spending months writing a show and having it come together in front of a comedy audience, no matter how small, is extremely creatively satisfying. Ironically, it’s the little moments of unscripted cheeky ad-libs that emerge and not the long laboured over gags that bring me the most joy and those ad-libbed moments are in many ways just me playing silly buggers. JOK OK, Andrew this is a tell-all question, why and when did you share stages with Cher, and Robbie Williams? And what's the goss on you running a Finishing School @ Melbourne's Trades Hall? AMC The goss at Finishing School is that Amy finally kissed Alex, but it hardly seems relevant to your readers who may not know that Mr McClelland’s Finishing School is a club night I’ve run since 2008. Ever since I was forced to ballroom dance by that strict German couple in Xavier’s Great Hall I’ve loved to shake it on the d-floor. When many people think of clubbing they imagine thumping house and techno, long lines, strobe lights and the seedier parts of King St, but I’ve always loved songs and melodies and there’s still a big underground scene in Melbourne for dancing to all kinds of music. An insatiable appetite for indie/rock/soul and pop clubbing led me to DJing since 2008 at my own night, Mr McClelland’s Finishing School. It’s a night for people who love to dance to songs and it became a quite wild success. We focus on music and dancing only, so ours is not a place for picking up (although we don’t puritanically ban it) or fighting (we haven’t had one in 14 years.) It is a place for dancing however one sees fit to and I play music from the 50s to today, so our crowd reflects that diversity of tastes and ages. We’ve been Time Out Melbourne’s number 1 club night a number of times which is most gratifying and it was having some music execs see me DJ and dance there that led to bookings for Cher and Robbie Williams. The Cher tour was late 2018. I got to be her support act for every show on her 16 date Aus/NZ tour and she was AMAZING. She’s the same age as my mum, but I only called her mum by mistake once. She has such amazing energy on stage and I couldn’t believe the amount of energy she had dancing to ‘Believe'. She even got me a birthday cake and sang happy birthday to me, even though it wasn’t my birthday, (because I’d told her it was my birthday.) It was amazing to get to perform for crowds as big as 18,000. A substantial step up from the 80 we could fit in to the Montague Theatre. Robbie Williams was a lot of fun too, although I only got to play with him once in June of this year. He’s still a very charming, funny and suave performer for whom it seems the 90s will never end. He certainly flirted with audience members from stage as if he was still 25. JOK You have written a one-hour stage show based on Gilbert & Sullivan ‘The Very Model of a Modern Major Musical'. Does the G&S connection hark back to when Xavier students turned thespian actors? AMC Absolutely. I’m not sure I would have explored G&S much had Xavier not forced me into it. Back then if you wanted to perform on stage regularly at Xavier it was inevitable you took part in the ancient Xav/Genazzano G&S tradition and once I’d slipped into the red coat of the soldier’s chorus in ‘Patience’ I loved it! There’s so much cheeky, ridiculous fun in G&S and the music is sublime. The wordy comedy of song like ‘The Very Model of a Modern Major General’ or ‘The Duke of Plazatoro’ enchanted me then and continue to do so now. During the lockdowns, after I’d exhausted the possibilities of house-plant maintenance and sour-dough kneading it was the ridiculously immense task of writing a full sized modern G&S which captured my imagination, as well as my time. The show I perform in the Fringe Festival isn’t actually the full length one. That requires two full choruses, 7 lead performers, has 22 songs and runs for over two hours and although that operetta is completely written (if Xavier ever wants to put it on I promise very cheap/free rights to it) it’s far too much for me and my accompanist alone to perform (although that doesn’t stop us from trying.) The Fringe Festival version goes for just one hour and consists of highlights from the Operetta as well as stand up about Gilbert & Sullivan, my own life and desperately asking the audience for funding for the full operetta. The show is set in a corporate law-firm taking part in an inter-firm, inter-gender football competition and although the references, corporate lingo and gender politics are modern, the music is all G&S, the comedy is wildly topsy-turvy and of course there are royals in disguise, long-lost twins and everyone gets married to someone at the end. Happily, the show is in a fully wheelchair accessible venue in the perfect 19th Century surrounds of the Trades Hall. It would be a joy of course to see as many old Xavs and, indeed, anyone else in the show as possible and no knowledge of G&S is actually needed. It appeals to both the passionate G&S fan and those with no idea what a "G&S" is. |