“Hey hey, what’s cookin’!”
Talking with Murray Hill is exactly the experience you hope it to be. Rapid gags, casual asides about the neon-lit burlesque boulevards Hill has called home for the better part of his career, and reigning above it all, an enthusiasm for performance that harks back to the golden age of entertainment.
The celebrated MC and shtick-slinger will be ad-libbing his way throughout Club Swizzle in January, and it’s the kind of gig that is a far cry from the Opera House’s usual fare.
“I can’t wait!” Hill cries. “I’ve definitely found different energies in different audiences. For example, there’s a huge difference between a Los Angeles audience, and then travelling north to San Francisco. It’s night and day. I can walk onstage and tell a joke like, ‘The more you applaud the more you get to hear about my childhood!’ and in San Francisco they go bananas! ‘Yow! Whooo!’ While in LA, they go, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ And that’s a very short plane ride. New York is always a tough audience. They come there and want you to prove something to them. But everyone has been telling me about how great Sydney audiences are as well, so I’m looking forward to that. In Australia people are excited that you’re performing, and they’re wanting to have a good time. It seems you guys have quite a love for live theatre.”
With elements of burlesque, stand-up comedy and bartending acrobatics, Club Swizzle is likely to provide something for every taste, and Hill’s passion for audience interaction is set to ensure an evening like no other. He is, however, unlikely to face the kind of demanding crowd that hallmarked the beginning of his MC career.
“I came out of the nightclub scene in New York. Every single night, 11pm to 3am, working it. “When you’re working in nightclubs, gay clubs at that hour, you really have to learn to keep an audience’s attention, because they’re all drunk and there to have a good time. I didn’t develop in a stand-up club where everyone’s sitting there watching you, giving you their attention, where if you bomb you’re in big trouble. I came from a scene where you had to earn their attention; you had to earn laughs in a very different way. So from day one there was a lot of audience interaction, and that’s partly because they were so close to me.” He laughs. “I mean, sometimes they were maybe a foot away and there wasn’t anything you could do. People would be calling out your name, spilling drinks on you. All that stuff.”
Not that audiences here are entirely unfamiliar to Hill. Having previously entertained in Melbourne, he has a sense of what kind of antics make us tick. Plus, he’s already a big fan of our most esteemed cultural ambassador; we should probably just go ahead and offer him an ambassadorship as well.
“I’m a huge fan of Dame Edna. Our humour is kind of similar, and a lot of people have said to me I’m another version of the Dame, just a different gender. So I definitely want to do a one-man show in that vein. Just the main character, a couple of dancers, a piano, and a lot of audience work. That’s kind of like my act; it’s all about entertainment. It’s not heavily political, it’s not hugely serious. It’s all about getting together and having a flash of a time. And Club Swizzle is going to be just like that, that’s the kind of energy we’re going to be bringing.”
Club Swizzleis playing at the Studio in the Sydney Opera House on Friday January 9 – Sunday February 15. Tickets are dissapearing so get yours quickly.
