Australian stage icons join forces for Senior Moments

“Occasionally when I do say how old I am out loud, I think 'Am I really that old? Well fancy that',” says the woman best known for her 30-year stint on the beloved Play School.

“I don't feel my age, people who have grown up and are old don't feel it, they just get on with life, and have fun.

“Of course I understand there are people not in that position, for whatever reason, but a lot of people out there are.

“Age is something we should celebrate.”

Which is just what Collings and other Australian television legends John Wood, Max Gillies and musical maestro Geoff Harvey are doing in Senior Moments, a fun night of music and laughter that looks at older people and the younger people they have to deal with.

There’s a take on many “senior moments”: Gillies does a rendition of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Age Retiree, with apologies to Pirates of Penzance, about how his diary is even busier now he is retired; Collings revisits a familiar place with an “Old School” skit where she has to convince Bill the Dinosaur to change his unprogressive ways and sings some nursery rhymes with a twist such as “Star light, star bright, I hope I make it through the night” and “Jack not nimble, Jack not quick, Jack now needs a walking stick”.

“I love the Old School piece,” she says.

“The set has a fairly strong resemblance to a place we might know, and me being me, as soon as I come on the audience shrieks because they put the whole thing together and realise it's me.”

Collings has had steady work since leaving Play School in 1999. She was on air until 2007 thanks to repeats, and returned for the 50th anniversary. She didn’t have to audition for Senior Moments but was approached by the producers.

“I’m still a working actor,” she says. “But I don't sit at home twiddling my thumbs waiting for the phone to ring.

“I'm in a choir, I do gentle exercise twice a week, walk four days a week, I go to the theatre, see movies, catch up with friends, my life is very full.”

Wood’s not having so much fun when we speak. He’s been battling a chest infection and is well out of sorts.

“Getting old is not fun when you're not well, let me tell you,” he says.

“But this is such a fun show, I’d like to say all singing, all dancing, but there’s not much dancing at our age.”

Wood is loving working with Collings and Gillies and the other cast members. He remembers seeing Gillies in a rendition of Waiting for Godot in 1962.

“We were both much, much younger then,” Wood says.

“It was before I knew anything about the theatre at all, but Max was bloody wonderful in it, fantastic, it was a new experience for me.”

Harvey is the oldest of the cast at 83. (For the record, Collings is 78 - I Googled - Wood is 72 and Gillies is 77) It appears, according to his cast mates, that he’s the most trouble of all.

“Geoff is cheekier than ever,” says Wood, for those of us who remember not only his talent on the piano from The Midday Show, but also his wit.

“He's the oldest of us all and he potters around, sits down at the piano and the years fall away, he's the most beautiful piano player.”

Both Collings and Wood say the show will appeal to audiences of all ages, they’ll all take something different from it.

“Some people have found it close to the bone but the sort of experiences the characters in the show go through are the sort of experiences that one way or another we all go through really.”

Senior Moments is playing at the Canberra Theatre on March 8-9. Tickets from $55. Bookings at canberratheatrecentre.com.au