The Newcastle Herald Going Out Supplement,

Thursday,July 5,1990

Stepping into the Spotlight.You’ve heard the story of the man who came to fix the theatre lighting system and ended up playing the leading role?Well, it’s true! Chris Royal is the man who repaired the spotlight and now has it shining on him. Mr Royal, 32, is playing several characters in Confusions, a collection of five linked Alan Ayckbourn comedies being staged this month by Maitland Repertory Society. His chance to tread the boards came about when the Maitland group had problems with the lighting board in it’s Repertory Playhouse a week before the opening of a show in May. Mr Royal, the Manager of Hunter Sound and Lighting (formerly McLeans Sound and Lighting) was called in to see what was wrong.While getting the lighting board back into working order he asked a Maitland Repertory member, Robert Gregg, what coming up.As it turned out, Mr Gregg was directing the next production, Confusions, and he brought out a copy of the script and handed it to Chris.“I was roped in, hook, line and sinker” Mr Royal said.

Confusions is not Chris Royal’s acting debut.He made his first stage appearance at the age of four, playing A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin while father sang about the character in a church production in his home town of Glen Innes.Theatre and theatrics have rarely been far away since, in a career that has seen him doing sound and lighting for groups such as the Rockmelons, the Triffids and mixing dancer-singer David Atkins for his acclaimed show Dancin’ Man.In Confusions he plays characters full of sound and fury but offers little en-light-enment.“Drinking Companion” has him as a travelling salesman trying to chat up an unseduceable perfume saleslady in a provincial hotel bar.In “Between Mouthfuls he is half of a couple dining in a restaurant whose relationship collapses while the waiter unconcernedly serves them each course.“Gosforth’s Fete” puts him in the role of a vicar at a garden that goes hilariously wrong, and in “ A Talk in the Park” he one of several people sitting on park benches who are unable to communicate with each other.Each play is linked by related or reoccurring characters.In “Mother Figure” for example the only play in which Chris Royal does not appear, the central character is a demented woman who is the wife of the travelling salesman in “Drinking Companions”Other members of the cast of “Confusions” are Linda Bullen, Brad Burgess, Rachel Everett, Robert Gregg, Jan Hazzard, Angela Johnson and Dimity Webb.Confusions opens at Maitland Repertory Playhouse on July 18 and plays Wednesday , Friday and Saturday at 8pm, until August 4.Bookings can be made at McDonald Bros Booksellers in High St Maitland, Phone 33-5118.

Most of Chris Royal’s early theatrical involvement was with rock bands and he spent his youth ‘tinkering with amplifiers and guitars’His tinkering was to make him quite expert in theatrical sound and lighting and when he went to Sydney at 18 he was quickly involved in doing lighting for the North Sydney Amateur Opera Co.He toured northern NSW and Queensland’s Darling Downs with a children’s pantomime Cinderella, put together by himself and a group of friends on a shoestring basis, and also toured with jazz and rock bands, doing there sound and lighting.He then spent two years in the united States and Britain, doing considerable sound mixing work in the latter.On returning to Australia, Chris was hired for a two-month tour with Slim Dusty’s bush band show.One of his most challenging jobs was miking David Atkins for his highly acclaimed musical revue , Dancin’ Man.“My biggest problem was David’s dynamism” Chris said.“He is a performer who is on the move constantly. Making it difficult to set up the body mikes so that it maintains the same quality of sound when he sings.“another difficulty is that he puts so much energy into his dancing that he sweats profusely and the sweat in rehearsal ran into the microphones transmitter.. “I solved the problem by putting the mike into a cellophane bag and sealing it. It was the only way to keep the moisture out of the radio mike.”

By: Ken Longworth.

The Newcastle Herald Going Out Supplement,

Thursday , July 5,1990