Pretty Woman The Musical Crown Theatre Perth season to star Bobby Fox in dual roles Happy Man and Mr Thompson

Bobby Fox might welcome Pretty Woman The Musical audiences to Hollywood in his role as Happy Man, but the Irishman instead discovered his own career dream in Australia. The four-time World Irish Dance Champion, who had performed in Riverdance, was touring Australia during 2000 with another Irish dance stage show, To Dance On The Moon, when he fell in love with the country, vowing to return. Fox did just that the following year to study dance at Sydney’s ED5International performing arts academy, where the accompanying singing and acting classes in the course saw his natural progression to music theatre. “About six months in I went, ‘Oh, I reckon I could actually be in a musical’ and then I ran out of money, as 19-year-olds do,” Longford-born Fox recounts. “I didn’t know if I could even finish the course and thought I might have to go home.” Through the help of academy directors Elena and Mario De Cinque, not only did Fox finish the course, he also successfully applied for Australian residency and secured an ensemble role in musical Mamma Mia! within the same week. “It was like ‘Yep, he’s in, get him working, get him paying tax immediately,’” 43-year-old Fox jokes. “It was five years of doing shows in the ensemble (including Dusty — The Original Pop Diva), and then I got into Jersey Boys.” Fox originated the character of Franki Valli in the Australian production, which premiered in 2009, performing Jersey Boys more than 850 times before leaving to expand his music theatre horizons with the acclaimed leading man role on his resume. It is a career-defining experience still close to his heart, evident in the recent live show Jersey Forever that Fox took the reins of — as director, choreographer, producer and promoter — nostalgically reuniting with original co-stars Stephen Mahy, Scott Johnson and Glaston Toft. Before his next performance with “the boys” at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre in August, Fox has headed west for Pretty Woman The Musical’s Perth season, covering the dual roles of Happy Man and Mr Thompson while Tim Omaji is on paternity leave. Fox found his feet in the musical over the final weeks of the Sydney season, playfully referring to them to as “his previews”, before hitting the Crown Theatre Perth stage alongside Samantha Jade as Vivian, Ben Hall as Edward and Michelle Brasier as Kit De Luca. Based on the much-loved 1990 film starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, and with a rock score by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, the production first opened on Broadway in 2018 under the direction of Jerry Mitchell, making it a huge drawcard for Fox. “Jerry Mitchell is such a Broadway legend and an amazing entertainment director,” Melbourne-based Fox says. “I had done Hairspray before as well, so I was familiar with his style. He really knows how to command pace and attention, which is what you went when it comes to something that’s so precious as the universally loved story of Pretty Woman. “It’s just so full of comedy and drama. We have our hero Vivian’s journey, who is very much taken out of the world she’s in and placed into a new one. We see her grow and become the independent woman she always knew that she could be.” Part narrator, Fox describes Happy Man as essentially the fairy godfather in the stage version of this fairy tale, who gets to deliver the film’s iconic aforementioned line “Welcome to Hollywood. What’s your dream?” “He becomes such a positive figure for everyone who he collides with and very much spreads happiness,” he says. “Then I also play his polar opposite, in a sense, as the hotel manager Mr Thompson. Mr Thompson is the first person to see the magic in Miss Vivian, as he calls her . . . He just gives her a nudge in the right direction, knowing her potential. “There’s nothing better as an actor, and certainly a character actor, than to be able to play multiple characters, and use different voices and different mannerisms and different physical vocabulary to portray these characters. “I really love that I get to be the delivery man of such positivity. It’s the story that people love, with music by one of the greatest songwriters of all time. It’s just one of those incredible classic music theatre party experiences.” Pretty Woman The Musical is at Crown Theatre Perth from April 18 to May 24. Tickets at ticketmaster.com.au.