Maestro takes on the Bard

Best known to Southlanders for his singing, Invercargill’s maestro of musicals is taking on the Big Guy.

Not The Phantom (been there) not Jesus Christ Superstar (done that) – David McMeeking is heading to Queens Park today to make his Shakespearean debut.

Shakespeare in the Park’s 2019 production, Rude Mechanicals Revival, sees McMeeking play Francis Flute, one of the bumbling performers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It’s 30 years later, and they’re getting the gang back together – with mixed, glorious results.

McMeeking has an impressive theatrical CV – most notably performing in Les Miserables throughout New Zealand, and being part of the professional cast of the Australasian season of Phantom of the Opera, understudy to Rob Guest’s Phantom, in the mid-to-late 1990s.

Here in Southland he’s generally become very well-known as That Guy In All Of The Musicals.

Then last year he delighted audiences in Repertory Invercargill’s Blackadder Goes Forth, and this year is taking on the Bard.

‘‘You can’t hide behind anything. You’re completely on your own if you don’t know what you’re doing or you don’t know what to say … With singing you just sing a song.’’

And learning the lines has been, frankly, tough.

‘‘Initially I was quite worried, because I’d read this stuff and the next day it was gone. Usually some of it sticks in your head but it doesn’t and until you’re rehearsing it then it starts to stick in your head.’’

Rude Mechanicals Revival is a play about a group of ageing actors giving it another crack 30 years after their big debut – and there were parallels there for McMeeking that he’s thoroughly embracing.

‘‘I’m getting to the stage of my career where the list of characters I can play is shrinking year by year, you know, my days of playing, well, probably playing Jesus and Judas … and I’m certainly not ever going to play Danny Zuko ever again because I can’t grow the hair for it you see?

‘‘And that was another thing that attracted the piece to me because it was a group of ageing actors who are getting together to do another performance.’’

He likes to think the regulars who wander down the carriageway with their picnics will be pleasantly surprised to see him tread these particular boards.

‘‘They’ll think, ‘Is that that bloody singer? What the hell’s he doing Shakespeare for?’ And then hopefully they’ll say, ‘Oh, he wasn’t too bad at that, was he?’’’

Rude Mechanicals Revival, Queen’s Park, February 13-16. Tickets available at Eventfinda.co.nz or at the Invercargill i-Site.