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ABC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Eddie Perfect shares how Beetlejuice the Musical came back from the dead
Eddie Perfect doesn't mince words: in 2019, he says, Beetlejuice the Musical was "going to die". The show — with music and lyrics by Perfect, and book by Scott Brown and Anthony King — opened on Broadway in late March that year to reviews calling it "dismal and gross", "over-caffeinated, overstuffed and virtually charmless", and "absolutely exhausting". By June, ticket sales had tanked. "There was a bit of a vibe about the show that it was dead on arrival," Perfect, an actor, writer and composer, says. Perfect didn't feel angry about the show's apparent failure. And despite the negative reception, Beetlejuice was nominated for eight Tony Awards that year, including best musical. For the performance at the ceremony, Perfect rewrote the opening number, 'The Whole "Being Dead" Thing', to be about poltergeist Betelgeuse/Beetlejuice crashing the Tonys, incorporating jokes about the awards, Broadway, and even actors in the audience. When the performance — led by the original musical Beetlejuice, Alex Brightman — was uploaded online, it quickly reached millions of views. "People loved the chaos of it," Perfect says. "They were like, 'What is this insane show, with Beetlejuice yelling at Adam Driver for killing Han Solo?'" In the same month, a just-released cast recording also went viral, this time on TikTok. "[TikTok] allowed people to take these frenetic, wild songs with really strong characters and interpret them in their own way," Perfect says. That's when Beetlejuice the Musical's fortunes started to turn around. While in April 2019, the show's weekly ticket sales were just $US600,000 ($900,000), by November, they had reached $US1.48 million ($2.3 million). By the end of that month, Beetlejuice had broken its venue's weekly box-office record. But the change was in more than just dollar figures. Audiences started to turn up wearing stripes in the style of the titular character, or entire wedding dresses like Lydia Deetz, the show's teenage protagonist. The cast and crew started to receive fan art by the crate-full, which they'd plaster over the walls, backstage. "The difference between the first two weeks, and then what it became, was [audiences] walked in totally primed to love the show," Perfect says. "They knew the music, they knew the characters, they were obsessed with it. Beetlejuice the Musical wound up closing at the same time as every other show in New York, with the onset of the pandemic. It triumphantly reopened on Broadway two years later, in 2022, ultimately closing after a successful run of nearly 700 performances. "You have to f***ing fail at the beginning, I think," Perfect says. "Then, people have to discover it, and discover you, and come back and find their own way to you. "I don't feel vindication or anything. I feel relieved I get to stay in the great sandpit of Broadway because, if it had failed, I don't know if anyone would ever have asked me back." Now, the show — and its potent fandom — has finally arrived in Australia, with Perfect in the role of Beetlejuice. Perfect wasn't allowed to watch Beetlejuice when the Tim Burton movie, starring Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Michael Keaton, came out in 1988. Aged just 11, he remembers desperately wanting to see it. It's the story of the recently deceased Maitlands (Baldwin and Davis), who try to wrench their home back from nouveau riche interlopers the Deetzes (Catherine O'Hara and Jeffery Jones), with a little help from their teenage daughter, Lydia (Ryder), who can communicate with the dead. It wasn't until Perfect was a teenager in the 90s, browsing his local video store in Mentone, in Melbourne's south-east, that he finally had the chance to rent it on VHS. "What I remember was the incredible visual language of that film," he says. "It was so interesting and magical and wonderful. "And I remember feeling afraid and repulsed by the character of Beetlejuice. As a kid, he represented a decaying, decrepit, gross old man." The gothic aesthetic and attitude of Ryder as Lydia and the suburbia of the world of the Maitlands also felt familiar to Perfect. "It sort of felt like a battle between tastes: suburbia versus a more modernistic view of life and art and culture. "But I don't think I could tell you really what it was about as a kid or what the story was about." About 20 years later, in 2014, the composer started working on the score for the Beetlejuice musical from the back of his home in Brunswick in inner-city Melbourne. He didn't yet know if he had the job but had managed to convince the production company, Warner Bros, and the director, Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge! The Musical), to give him a chance. He wrote two songs — one for Beetlejuice, another for Lydia — free of charge. "I'd been going back and forth between New York [and Melbourne], knocking on the door and not getting anywhere," Perfect recalls. They were 'Dead Mom' for Lydia, inspired by 90s grunge, and what became the musical's opening number: 'The Whole "Being Dead" Thing' — whose music bounces wildly between genres, from polka to death metal to jazz, mirroring Beetlejuice's rapidly changing personality. Perfect worked so hard on them, not only because he'd finally got a shot on Broadway, but because a musical adaptation of Beetlejuice felt like a perfect fit for him. He started out writing and performing his own cabaret shows, before he featured as multiple characters in Casey Bennetto's Keating! the Musical, and as the titular cricketer in his first musical, the award-winning Shane Warne: The Musical. "When it comes to my writing, naturalism is not where I go," Perfect says. "I go to extremes. I love big stories, wild stories, shocking, surprising, dark and funny stories with an emotional centre." Making Beetlejuice the Musical is the kind of opportunity Perfect doesn't think he could've found in Australia at the time. "In Australia, I feel like every musical is an anomaly," he says. "Every musical is an exception to a rule. "A musical comes up because somebody has the motivation to make it happen — usually the writer or the creator. They have an idea, they want to get it made, and then they go and find a way to make it. "I find that that's changing a little bit. I think the attitude to musical theatre is starting to change, especially now that more Australians are participating in creating work that's either travelling overseas or working with creative teams overseas." Months after sending off his two songs, Perfect found out he had the Beetlejuice job, and uprooted to New York, where he also wrote a new score for the critically panned King Kong musical. By this time, he had a better sense of what Beetlejuice was about — especially the musical version written by Brown and King, which re-centres the story around Lydia and her grief at the loss of her mother. During the workshop stage, the collaborators made the choice to avoid easy narrative beats — like, for instance, Lydia reuniting with her mother in the Netherworld. "That's just a fantasy invention; that's a deception for anyone that's suffered grief," Perfect says. "The defining characteristic of grief is that there are no answers. Any advice, comfort, resolution you might get dies with that person. That's why grief is so hard because it is just a silence at the other end." Instead, Perfect says, the only way out of grief is through it — you have to feel it and then honour loss by "living life as f***ing well as you can and as full as you can". All of that is in the musical — along with wildly funny moments (and sand-worm puppets). "[Beetlejuice] allows people to crack open and laugh at that thing that scares us the most," Perfect says. As Beetlejuice, Perfect emphasises the character's loneliness, drawing on what he recalls of his teenage desperation to be both seen and liked. "I just want everyone on stage to like me," he says. "And when you want people to like you, it's quite a vulnerable place to be, and vulnerability makes the character likeable." Taking on the role of Beetlejuice also draws on the skills Perfect developed doing stand-up comedy and cabaret through his 20s — like talking directly to an audience. "It's all about the one-on-one relationship with an audience and guiding people through discomfort into comfort, through danger into safety," he says. "All that stuff I think makes comedy really exciting has all found a home in Beetlejuice." Beetlejuice the Musical is at Regent Theatre, Melbourne, until August 31.
The Australian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Australian
Perfect touch gives extra juice to staging of movie's musical adaptation
Do not make the mistake of assuming Beetlejuice The Musical isn't for you. TS Eliot praised Edgar Allan Poe's 'powerful intellect' then dismissed it as that of 'a highly gifted person before puberty'. I feel much the same about Tim Burton's filmmaking. I can admire the glorious imagination of it but his pre-adolescent eccentricities and overall lack of coherence in his movies exhaust me. This musical adaptation of Beetlejuice, then, is an absolute marvel. It retains the look, the basic plot and the Harry Belafonte song-and-dance set pieces of Burton's 1988 movie, but improves virtually everything else. Even design. The emotional and dramatic details are sharper and vastly more persuasive. The tweaks to the plot and backstories are subtle enough not to alienate existing fans, but will attract – and resonate deeply with – new fans, young and old. One gets the feeling Burton wasn't all that interested in Lydia, Winona Ryder's character, next to Beetlejuice himself (Michael Keaton). In this stage adaptation, with a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King, and music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, Lydia's story is given equal weight. Like Beetlejuice, Lydia (Karis Oka) feels invisible. (The very first sung line is Lydia's: 'You're invisible when you're sad.') This musical adaptation of Beetlejuice, then, is an absolute marvel. Picture: Michelle Grace Hunter While movie-Lydia's 'goth' appearance felt like a sulky self-indulgence, or a mere style choice, stage-Lydia's dress is patently a reflection of what she's feeling: she's in mourning for her 'dead mom'. If you want to get a sense of the power, razor-sharp focus and sophistication of this piece, listen to the song Dead Mom from the original Broadway cast recording, or look for Sophia Anne Caruso's jaw-dropping performance of the song online. The lyrics are thrillingly smart. They're also identifiably Perfect's work, with a delicious meta-theatrical quip about jokes not landing. Crucially, he gets Lydia. He understands her confusion, frustration, loneliness and grief. Lydia, her father Charles and soon-to-be stepmother Delia have just moved into a house once owned by Barbara and Adam, recently deceased. Trouble is, Barbara and Adam can't move on to the netherworld, thanks to Beetlejuice having burned their handbook, so they try their damnedest to frighten the new residents out of their big old house. They're learning (to be ghosts) as they go along. (Barbara's idea of scary is micro-plastics, Adam's is DuoLingo's pushy green owl!) Fun as Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam (a shockingly boyish Alec Baldwin) were in the big screen original, the musical gives the 'Maitlands 2.0' a whole new motivation. Elise McCann and Rob Johnson play Barb and Adam like a latter-day Brad and Janet from Rocky Horror, but their antics manage to be as sweetly touching as they are comedic. Likewise Charles (Tom Wren) and Delia (Erin Clare) are less cartooned in the stage adaptation. Or, in Delia's case, differently cartooned. (She's an air-headed but well-intentioned 'life coach' rather than an appalling and insufferably pretentious sculptor.) BJ himself is still 'a needy pervert' – in Barbara's barbed words – but he's far less aggravating than the screen original. Even he earns a backstory. (No spoilers here!) In the title role at long last, Eddie Perfect is far more than a growling ringmaster – he impels the show. I honestly didn't think anyone could match the first stage Lydia, Sophia Anne Caruso, but I didn't miss her a bit! Like the real life red supergiant in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse, Karis Oka reveals herself to be one of the very brightest stars in the firmament. A supernova in the making. And, generously, Perfect lets Oka take the ultimate bow. Tickets: $75-$265.95 plus service fee. Bookings: Ticketek. 2½ hours, including interval. Until August 3.
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Beetlejuice the Musical review – Eddie Perfect is simply perfect in his nutty and wild hit
What a happy coincidence: two musicals have opened in Melbourne within a week of each other that both take you to hell and back. Hadestown deals with an ancient Greek concept of the underworld, allegorical but rich with meaning. Beetlejuice has a netherworld straight out of the imagination of Tim Burton, cartoonish and strictly adolescent. Neither of them would pass muster with a fire and brimstone evangelist – who'd surely require more wailing and gnashing – but they work well enough as places of wonder and enchantment in a modern musical. In adapting Burton's keenly idiosyncratic 1988 film to the stage, composer and lyricist Eddie Perfect and book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King know just what to ditch and what to keep precisely the same. So we get the swirling vortices and striped suits, the sandworm and desiccated head, the dead gridiron players and the woman who smokes out of her trachea. We also get the two calypso songs from Harry Belafonte, the Banana Boat Song (Day-O) and Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora). If the path the story takes is simpler, it hits all the right beats and gets us roughly to the same destination. The Maitlands, Barbara (Elise McCann) and Adam (Rob Johnson), live in a twee but warmly welcoming Victorian house in Connecticut – until they're electrocuted in a wiring mishap. Into their home move the Deetzes: Charles (Tom Wren) and his daughter Lydia (Karis Oka), who is mourning the recent death of her mother. With Delia (Erin Clare), the life coach Charles has employed to cheer Lydia up, the Deetzes redecorate, disrupt and disarm the house's (dead) original inhabitants, and when the Maitlands attempt to scare them away, try to monetise their own haunting. Hanging over this problematic arrangement like a literal bad smell is the demon Betelgeuse (Perfect), who tries to manipulate everyone into saying his name three times so he can return to the land of the living. In this iteration of the story, Betelgeuse is a lord of misrule, an agent of chaos and our principle narrator (unreliable, of course). He brings the bulk of the fun and danger to the stage, as well as a plethora of jokes in highly questionable taste. Perfect bounds around the stage like a demented pinball and while his gravelly baritone is stretched to breaking at times, he's so joyous and irrepressible it barely matters. His Betelgeuse is far smuttier and debased than Michael Keaton's version and Perfect wrings every roguish morsel from it. If Betelgeuse is the musical's soul, then Lydia is its heart. Oka brings a surplus of intelligence and edge to the part, her longing for a dead mother landing with more authenticity and depth of feeling than it probably deserves. She doesn't have the most textured or resonant voice, but she makes a wonderfully droll foil to Perfect and nails the nonchalant teenage disdain. McCann and Johnson are also underpowered vocally, although they bring warmth and vibrancy to the Maitlands, who are the blandest characters on stage. Wren and Clare are delicious as the garish, highly kinky but ultimately thoroughly likable lovers. Noni McCallum and Angelique Cassimatis are terrific in small but memorable parts. While the cast are strong and the band in fine form, Beetlejuice is a musical powered less by the actors or the score, and more by the direction and design. Alex Timbers marshals the madness with absolute control of pacing and tone. The oversized storyboard set (David Korins) is brash and clever, constantly shifting mood and perspective as the house churns through its owners. Some reveals are astonishing but they're handled with such casual ease, you take them for granted. William Ivey Long's costumes are startling and funny, and Michael Curry's puppets are wickedly expressive. Jeremy Chernick's special effects dazzle and the whole thing is lit with maximalist precision by Kenneth Posner, so that the stage picture shimmers and pulsates. Although, for a work where everything is dialled up to eleven and the visual effect is often overwhelming, Beetlejuice's netherworld feels slightly underdone. With its animated perpetual corridors and diminishing squares, it seems less like a nightmare realm and more like a waiting station for the recently departed. Burton's vision of hell was endearingly eccentric, but here it lacks texture and detail. Perfect should be immensely proud of his achievement with Beetlejuice, which is frequently hilarious and consistently entertaining. His songs are lyrically consummate – he shares a love of wordplay and complex internal rhymes with fellow composer Tim Minchin – and he has a great talent for pastiche and parody. The score includes nods to Danny Elfman's soundtrack, as well as the aforementioned calypso music, without losing its jaunty sense of self. If Beetlejuice's vision of an afterlife lacks any moral or intellectual dimension, if it's really just a wacky place with puppets, childlike and emotionally remote – well, same for the source material. The stage adaptation is careening, nutty and wild, and Perfect cranks the engine of its wit so assuredly he should probably get a raise. He does, after all, 'do this bullshit like eight times a week.' And it is a hell of a lot of fun. Beetlejuice the Musical is on at Regent Theatre, Melbourne until 3 August
ABC News
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
A Bite To Eat With Alice: Eddie Perfect fish pie
When Eddie Perfect is in the kitchen, Alice knows it's time for a dish that delivers comfort, flavour and a little bit of fun. The key to a perfect fish pie? A mix of fresh white fish, smoked cod and prawns, for layers of flavour and texture. ( ABC TV: Wesley Mitton ) This 'Perfect' fish pie is a rich and creamy classic, packed with tender white fish, smoky cod and sweet prawns, all wrapped in a velvety, herb-infused sauce. A rich and velvety white sauce forms the base of the perfect fish pie — don't skip the nutmeg for that extra depth of flavour. ( ABC TV: Wesley Mitton ) Topped with golden, flaky puff pastry, it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Whether you're making it for a cosy family dinner or a special occasion, this pie is the ultimate warm and satisfying dish (just don't forget to get creative with your pastry decorations). Let the filling cool slightly before adding the pastry — this helps prevent a soggy base and ensures a crisp, golden topping. ( ABC TV: Wesley Mitton ) Tips Check the roux by smell: You'll know your roux is ready when it starts to smell like freshly-baked cookies — this means the flour is cooked and won't taste raw. Prevent a skin on the sauce: Cover the white sauce with baking paper while it cools, to stop a skin from forming and keep it smooth. Swap the fish: You can use any firm white fish in this recipe, so feel free to substitute based on what's fresh or available. Save your pastry offcuts: Any leftover pastry trimmings can be rolled into a ball and frozen for later use — perfect for future pies or small pastries! This recipe appears in A Bite to Eat with Alice, a new nightly cooking show and weeknights at 5pm on ABC TV. Sign up to the ABC Lifestyle newsletter Get a mid-week boost and receive easy recipes, wellbeing ideas, and home and garden tips in your inbox every Wednesday. You'll also receive a monthly newsletter of our best recipes. Your information is being handled in accordance with the Email address Subscribe Preheat the oven to 180°C (200°C conventional). Stick 1 clove into each onion chunk and place in a small saucepan. Add the milk and bay leaves. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for about 8 minutes. Strain the cooking liquid into a clean bowl, reserving milk and discarding solids. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a low heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring for 1—2 minutes, until the flour smells like cookies. Add reserved milk and cook, stirring until the mixture starts to thicken. Add cream and simmer for 5 minutes. Rasp in the nutmeg, add the herbs, then season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes on the bench. Once cooled gently stir through the fish, smoked cod, prawns and eggs. Transfer the fish mixture into a baking dish 22x27x5cm. Place a single large piece of pastry over the filling to cover the fish mixture, then use a fork to press around the edge of the dish to seal. Cut off any excess pastry and make shapes with it to decorate the pie (anything aquatic welcomed and encouraged). Cut 2 slashes in the top of the pie for steam. Brush pastry with egg and bake for 25 minutes, or until pastry has risen and looks golden.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Eddie Perfect: ‘I think my true natural state is utter laziness'
Black bag of clean clothes slung over his shoulder, Eddie Perfect is fresh from the laundromat when we meet in a Bondi Beach bookstore-cafe. He's temporarily separated from his own front loader in Melbourne. The shop is a jumble of books, crammed and dark, with two wooden tables for cafe customers and armchairs for readers. We are in a section with a prominent display of heavy hitters – Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King and Patrick White. 'Read any White?' he asks. I tell him I read The Vivisector at uni. 'What about JM Coetzee?' Yes, Disgrace, and a couple of his early books. Perfect has read Disgrace, too, and Coetzee's Jesus trilogy. 'I grew up Catholic and when I got to the end, I felt … ' He pauses. 'Rearranged.' Sipping a chai, Perfect fits, well, just about perfectly with the hushed and bookish vibe. Dressed in day-off baggy jeans and a soft cotton waffle T-shirt, he speaks in a soft tones while he tucks into a chocolate brownie. He keeps his phone close by. His wife and two daughters are home in Melbourne and his Apple watch lights up with a photo of them. It's the other side of the coin to the one we're most familiar with – that of the multitalented, high-energy, high-profile entertainment professional, a wunderkind even. Perfect is in town performing in Candide at Sydney Opera House, before heading home to Melbourne to join rehearsals for the lead role in Beetlejuice the Musical, the movie spin-off Broadway show he wrote the music and lyrics for. Brought up in the somewhat less shiny bayside Mentone, Bondi is his suburb of choice when he's in Sydney and it still 'blows my mind', he says. 'It's the opposite of Melbourne, basically.' Perfect (his real name, by the way) is a household face thanks to his role in Channel 10's long-running TV series Offspring and stage shows ranging from snarky satirical solo cabarets to light-hearted musicals such as South Pacific, 9 to 5 and his first original musical Shane Warne the Musical. He's also a playwright (2013's The Beast, staged by Melbourne Theatre Company), a singer (bass-baritone) a composer and lyricist with two Broadway shows to his name – King Kong (which opened in New York in 2018) and, more recently, Beetlejuice. The 'wunderkind' label was attached when Perfect was in his early 20s, but 'I never felt like I was one', he says as we step into the bright sunshine. 'I actually think my true natural state is utter laziness. It's only that my mortification at the idea of not making the most of whatever time or gifts I have is slightly bigger than my desire to lie on the couch all day.' Any impression of continual creative activity is an illusion, he smiles. 'When it's time to talk to someone like yourself, then I'm in a busy part of my life. If we averaged all the busyness out over the last three years, I'm that fucking guy who does almost nothing.' We take off for a walk along the Bondi esplanade, crowded with dog walkers and the young and fit, promenading in flesh-tone athleisure wear. He's still lugging his laundry bag. Our pace soon slackens to a stroll but the conversation flows easily. He takes me to the faded art deco apartment building he once lived in and where his eldest daughter Kitty was (almost) born. 'We called the midwife and she said, not to worry, the baby wasn't going to arrive any time soon. We got to Randwick hospital with about seven minutes to spare.' He shows me his favourite tree ('It's been that high for about 20 years. How do trees know when to stop growing?') and talks about surfing ('I'm a poor to average surfer and not very gung-ho'). He talks about growing up middle-class (he's the son of two teachers, Judy and Tom) and working a summer job in year 12 in an educational bookstore whose owner deliberately kept the stockroom empty. 'It was like the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch – we had no fucking cheese! 'I remember looking at the empty shop and saying to myself 'This could be your life if you don't get out and make something of yourself.' That experience, he says, 'put me off disappointing people for life'. 'Now I'm someone who just wants to overdeliver on whatever promise I've made someone.' Once Candide opens, Perfect won't have much time or energy for strolling the esplanade. He's doubling the roles of the show's narrator, Voltaire, and the title character's unfailingly optimistic tutor, Dr Pangloss. At least the optimism comes naturally, he says. 'I am an optimistic person. I learned it by having an optimistic father, though a therapist would probably say that it's more about my inability to sit with uncomfortable feelings for long. I like to plough forward and just throw energy and optimism at things. But every now and then my wife [Lucy Cochran] is like, can't we just sit and wallow in the shit for a minute?' Basically, no, says Perfect. 'My trouble is that I find everything interesting. Even terrible things or things that don't work, or that most people don't like. You can always learn a lot from trying to understand what it is that makes something unsuccessful.' Which brings us back to books and reading. Perfect has recently fallen under the spell of the American author George Saunders – specifically his slender but weighty Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness. It chimed, says Perfect. 'He says when he looks at his life and the things that bring him sadness or regret, they are always failures of kindness, not anything else. When he could have been kinder, and wasn't.' We've become accustomed in an unkind world to seeing kind people as 'doormats', Perfect says. 'But kindness requires strength. When you are besieged by your own woes, it's very hard to give anything of yourself. You actually need to be very robust in order to be kind. It's a powerful thing.' While preparing for Candide, Perfect read Jamie Bernstein's memoir Famous Father Girl. Her dad, the musical polymath Leonard Bernstein, wrote Candide. 'There's a part where her mother, at the end of her life, calls her into her bedroom and says, 'Kindness, kindness, kindness, that's all that matters.' It's probably a bit twee to say, but I think that's true.' There are worse philosophies to align yourself with, I say. Perfect says he's wary of 'planting any kind of philosophical flag in the sand because I've just proven myself to be a hypocrite home and time again'. Instead, he prefers to focus on the little things and the community around him. 'I wait my turn in queues. I hate it when people cut in line for something. I think that's pretty much the baseline for me on fairness and equity. I don't like people being inconsiderate.' Aged 47, Perfect is the father of two teenage daughters. It's a lot, he says. 'There's cheerleading and ballet, and a lot of parties. We're in that period where we're either driving or sitting in the car killing time, waiting for the kids to finish what they're doing. It's not my favourite era, but I'm doing it.' He misses the toddler years, he says. 'It was relentless and tiring and no sleep but, you know, they need you, they look to you, and up to you, they listen to you. Now it's like I'm on call, ready to spring into action just in case. And that's hard, because they need you, but they don't want you.' Perfect says is happy to be at the threshold of his 'wise old man era'. He's mentoring emerging talents and writing a new musical with and for students at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (Waapa), his alma mater. It's an antidote to time spent writing. 'A lonely pursuit,' he says. 'You make yourself lonely and then you write your way back to people. That's what it feels like for me.' Solace, he says, comes in the form of birdwatching. He shows me the bird tattoos on each of his forearms – both are superb fairywrens. 'I love birds,' he says simply. Perfect is no twitcher, he's the first to admit, but he likes observing them at length. 'We live our lives in parallel. And it's nice, actually. It's good for my mental health to just go, you know what? At any one time, there's a species living an entirely separate existence that doesn't give a fuck about musicals or all my stresses or anything like that. I think that's a lovely thing to bear in mind.' Eddie Perfect performs in Candide for Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House until 14 March. He stars in Beetlejuice the Musical at Melbourne's Regent Theatre from 7 May.
