BOMBSHELL: Ali Harper is on tour with her one-woman show showing the lives of six different characters.
BOMBSHELL: Ali Harper is on tour with her one-woman show showing the lives of six different characters.
Ali Harper plays six very different women in her touring comedy-drama one woman show Bombshells, coming to Hawke's Bay early next month. She's quite used to wearing a few different hats herself - as an actress, singer and mother of three.
Bombshells, for which Harper won Wellington's prestigious Chapman Trippactress of the year award in 2008, was written by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. Beneath the polite surface of the six characters' lives simmer the social pressures and hidden desires of a modern day woman. "I play women from every walk of life, from a 16-year-old about to compete in a talent show and anything you think can go wrong does, up to a 64-year-old widow for who you think life must be pretty tame but isn't."
Singing was Harper's first love, the acting came later. The only one in her family to establish a career in the performing arts, she scored her first professional gig at 19, appearing in Chess in Dunedin. Having discovered the joy of acting, she auditioned for Toi Whakaari-NZ Drama School, graduating in 1994.
Since then, she has worked with many of the country's professional theatre companies, singing, acting or both, in shows including My Fair Lady, Sweeney Todd, The Sound of Music, Calendar Girls, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Evita, A Shortcut to Happiness, Grease, and this month's tour of Pirates of Penzance. Her first solo show was Andrew Lloyd Webber's one woman musical, Tell Me On a Sunday.
She has also appeared on TV in shows such as The Strip and Market Forces, was the resident singer with the Carl Doy Band on Dancing with the Stars, and sung at Christmas in the Park and with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.
She has also sung in her own cabaret show in New York, and released two albums, one her own treatments of 70s songs, the other, released earlier this year, a double album of "eclectic" tunes entitled Naughty and Nice.
Once this tour is over she will get cracking on writing her first play, based on the life of Doris Day and the days when Hollywood stars appeared in TV specials. Harper says she finds Day interesting because although she was known as the "girl next door", it wasn't a moniker she was entirely happy with - and the fact she had four husbands didn't quite fit her good girl image either.
She is being mentored through the writing process by fellow Pirates cast member Geraldine Brophy, who is well experienced with writing her own work.
Bombshells, starring Ali Harper, HB Opera House, Hastings October 5, tickets $29-$39 from Ticketek, CHB Municipal Theatre, Waipawa, 3pm & 7.30pm October 6. Bookings phone (06) 8578117 or email chbtheatre@xtra.co.nz
