In 2016, Anna O’Byrne was hand-picked by Julie Andrews to play Eliza Doolittle – now, she’s returning to the stage with a show that gives a peek behind the curtain.
Dame Julie Andrews has one of the most storied voices in show business: light, lilting, moving effortlessly between speech and song, each word perfectly enunciated, each note exactly perfect . But for Australian soprano Anna O’Byrne, it’s a voice that’s more familiar than to most – a voice she knows almost as well as her own. “I listen to a recording of Julie and I can hear exactly what she’s doing,” she says.
This is not to say that Andrews was a prescriptive director – meticulous, yes, and sure of what she wanted, but also willing to take a step back and let O’Byrne find her own way. “She never, ever told me how to sing, but she did tell me how to speak when I was singing,” she says. “She taught me how to use my voice to its best ability.”
For O’Byrne though, the stage was where she found herself. It’s this process of discovery and self-reflection that forms the heart of her one-woman show,rehearsal room and a suggestion from veteran actor Robyn Nevin. “As I was writing, songs were coming to me that helped tell the story,” says O’Byrne. “Not just songs from the show, but Julie’s songs.” O’Byrne recruited a small creative team and together they worked the raw material into “something stage-shaped”.
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