Tim Finn - Poor Boy
Tim Finn's plaintive ballads are reincarnated on the stage in Poor Boy - a melancholy mystery in a minor key.
By Nick Dent
The very best balladry of Tim Finn brings something spine-tingling to its discussion of human relationships. The Split Enz lyric "I hope I never, I hope I never have to cry again," as performed in Finn's trilling falsetto and backed by monumental piano flourishes, pushes beyond regret for a failed romance: it's practically a death wish.
The otherworldliness of Finn's work, together with its focus on family ties, informs Poor Boy, the songwriter's collaboration with Melbourne playwright Matt Cameron. A "play with songs", Poor Boy concerns a seven-year-old child who announces to his parents that he is not their son, but the reincarnation of a man killed in a traffic accident seven years previously.
"I'd wanted to do a theatre show for years," Finn says, on the phone from his Auckland home. "A friend of mine introduced me to Matt Cameron and we hit it off straight away. Matt came along with the title Poor Boy in the back of his mind. I'd been reading a book about children who seem to remember past lives, so we just kind of clicked and took it from there."
Armed with Finn's initial idea, Cameron went away and wrote a first draft in two months. What the songwriter did not initially know about the author of Tear from a Glass Eye was that he was a serious fan. "He didn't have to get up to speed with my past work - he really knew it. So he was able to pick and choose songs from all sorts of places."
Twelve Tim Finn compositions are featured, ranging from Enz classics to tracks from the eight solo albums and new song, 'Astounding Moon'. They're sung by the actors at various points in the play, backed by a five-piece band. "The songs work as a kind of soliloquy. Linda Cropper, who is a really fine actress, sings 'I Hope I Never,' which is quite a demanding song. She's the mother of the boy who feels he's someone else and it's a really painful moment when she realises she can't reach him. She came up with a unique interpretation of that song, and it's one of the highlights for me."
Directed by Simon Phillips, the show was a hit in Melbourne earlier this year ("People seemed to be reacting quite emotionally," Finn notes) and the Sydney Theatre Company is hosting the same production, albeit with Matthew Newton replacing Guy Pearce in the role of the dead man.
While Finn stresses that Poor Boy is not a musical, he confesses to a "soft spot" for the genre. "I saw My Fair Lady on stage when I was about eight and I remember leaping to my feet as they sang 'I'm Getting Married in the Morning'. During the song!" He laughs. "I was quite exalted." Nick Dent
Poor Boy plays at the Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, until 1 Aug.
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