Set in the Chicago 1950s The Detective’s Handbook follows Frank Thompson and his young partner Jimmy Hartmann as they investigate the murder of two policemen. Rob Johnson plays Hartmann, a new recruit determined to do it “by the book” who clashes hilariously with the world-weary Thompson.
We caught up with Rob during rehearsals to find out more about this all-new Australian production, translating the hardboiled crime genre into a musical, and favorite fictional detectives.
Could you tell us a little bit about The Detective’s Handbook and your role. I’m presuming you’re the young freshblood Jimmy Hartman?
I am Jimmy Hartman! He is the new kid on the block. It’s kind of a relatively classic noire detective story setup in this musical. It draws a lot on the very dark and shady 1950s hardboiled world. That’s essentially what the genre is. The story is about these two detectives and my character Hartman has been a cop for several years and has just been promoted to being a detective, which he’s very excited about. He gets partnered with a guy called Frank Thompson who is kind of a salt of the earth but very depressed, he’s had enough of life and has seen too much.
He’s an alcoholic and his former partner has just retired from the police force so he feels very isolated from his work. He’s very much a loner. And we get tossed together and told to investigate a double murder that has just occurred last night- two police officers from our Chicago police department have just been murdered under dubious circumstances and we get called in on Sunday morning to find out “what the hell happened”! Basically we just go from there.
It’s full of loose ends and red herrings and bizarre characters and all those genre tropes.
And how does this genre translate to a musical?
I was just talking with one of the other cast members about this this afternoon! It very much feels like more of a play with music than a flat-out musical. It’s very much about the genre and story that’s being told, so it has really felt like we’re rehearsing a play so far. And coincidentally we exist in this shady jazzy world where it just makes sense that sometimes people are breaking out in these jazz numbers. So I feel like the kind of genre it sits in makes it not have that conflict, otherwise with this kind of story it would feel very artificial if in the middle of it it had this huge dance number with all these cannons going off and a kickline. But I will say there is a very fantastic tap sequence in the middle of the show that works! It works because it plays against those musical tropes so much.
To answer the question after saying all that, no… haha. The style of the music compliments the story really really well.
The particularly exciting thing about this production of course is that it an all-new Australian work. How does it feel to be a part of something that has never been performed before?
I have found it to be extremely liberating, inspiring and exciting. How often does a new Australian work actually get sponsored and funded and you get told we want you guys to foster and develop this, do what you think is best?! What an opportunity! Also just the people that have been assembled, both cast and creatives, are so experienced in different ways than just merely being “musical theatre performers”. Jonathan Biggins the director has worked so extensively with sketch comedy and has such a strong classical theatrical background with that strong understanding for slapstick.
A lot of the scenes within the show could really just work as 2-minute sketches, but then they also slot seamlessly back into the overall story. People like Justin Smith, who was in the original cast of Rent and who is currently doing Arcadia at Sydney Theatre Company has been so great to work alongside with. And Sheridan Harbridge whose cabaret work is unbelievable but who is also just a tremendous dramatic actor and also a singer. It’s all very collaborative. So, all of those elements have made it not feel like: “oh no I hope I don’t stuff this up” but much more like a: “oh yeah, what a treat this will be fun!”.
The Hayes is of course the perfect place for such a musical, and seems to be increasing in quality and quantity of those more unique musicals?
The Hayes puts on such fantastically well-crafted productions, increasingly productions that have more funding which is exciting, but they still benefit from having that sort of new kid on the block status. So they can still take risks that maybe bigger theatre companies with bigger expectations placed upon them might recoil from. They’re still taking those risks and investing in new work, but at the same time not compensating for that by just bringing in inexperienced people. There’s still these heavy weights in the industry as well as less experienced people such as myself, being far earlier in my career in the industry than the others involved. For those people to be welcomed in evenly and put in a creative environment where we can all feel like we’re contributing to something really special is just fantastic. Ian Ferrington and Olga Solar (book and lyrics and music respectively) are in the rehearsal room with us and are still being referred to for questions like “is this true to the script?” or “is this what you wanted in the music?”, so its still developing. There are lots of hands involved and we’re all on the same page.
How does this role compare to playing a dancing dinosaur for example? Or a man of the la mancha? Or someone of Sondheim…?
In a funny way, like how I just mentioned about definitely acknowledging whilst I’m not put on a lower pedestal in the room creatively but being surrounded by all these people who have so much more experience than me, it kind of helps that I’m playing a character who is kind of in the exact same position. Jimmy turns up on his first day of being a detective and the chief is there and the chief’s secretary and these other cops who are more experienced than him and this detective Thompson and he’s very much a fish out of water who is wanting to prove himself. So he’s very green but eager, he just wants to learn and not step on peoples toes and say the right thing but it always ends up being the wrong thing… so I’ve definitely been channeling me through him. It is a different kind of role than I’ve done before but the writing is so strong on this show that it hasn’t felt like “oh this is really different”, it just fits really well and is easy to access as long as you stay true to what’s been written.
And finally, who is your favorite fictional detective?
I really like Tintin a lot because he’s a fellow redhead and he’s European and exotic and he has a cute white dog. If I was going to stay within the realm of hardboiled though, than Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. He encapsulates what I think is so great about the genre- which is he’s just a guy who is so world-weary but his compulsion to rid the world of evil is somehow so much stronger than his compulsion to destroy himself with his own vices. That kind of balance where no one is clean and no one is good but some people are just fighting to stop the bad guys harder than other people. That appeals to me a lot.
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Rob will be tracking down the baddies in The Detective’s Handbook at the Hayes Theatre from April 21st. For more information and to book visit www.hayestheatre.com.au
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