From Broadway to Ballroom with Liza Beamish at the Q has songs and dances

Liza Beamish had a career as an operatic soprano, which she enjoyed. Then she had two children, and after five off she was faced with the prospect of trying to re-enter the operatic world and balance that career with the demands of a family or to try something a bit different. She chose the latter, going into slightly lighter repertoire and taking it on in a more entrepreneurial fashion, and one of the results is From Broadway to Ballroom, a touring show that's appearing for the first time in the Canberra region at the Q.

"It's basically a team of six people - two ballet couples, myself and a tenor, Lachlan Baker," she says.

The two principal dancers, Emma and Rhett Salmon, were 2015 World Dance Council Champions. Beamish and Rhett Salmon worked to put the show together, combining the vocal, musical and choreographic elements.

Beamish and Baker haven't entirely forsaken their operatic roots - Baker will perform Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot and Beamish will sing the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen but in what she calls "a different version" with Spanish guitar playing and the dancers doing a tango while she sings.

"There's a change of tempo have way through," she says.

There will also be popular arias from such operas as Verdi's Rigoletto and La Traviata.

But the singers will, as the title suggests, be moving far beyond the world of opera. There will be operetta with Lehar's Merry Widow Waltz and musical theatre with classic songs such as Climb Every Mountain from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music and I Could Have Danced All Night from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. as well as numbers from more recent hits like Bring Him Home from Les Miserables and All I Ask Of You from The Phantom of the Opera.

There's also what she calls "an eclectic mix of pop" with numbers such as Sway, sung by Dean Martin and later Michael Buble, Bryan Adams' Everything I Do (I Do It For You), Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and Secret Garden's You Raise Me Up, among others.

Beamish has worked in both the operatic and musical theatre worlds. After working with Opera Australia she moved into musical theatre, understudying the role of Carlotta in the original Australian production of The Phantom of the Opera for 18 months. She had her own scheduled performances so she knew when she had to perform.

"It was an eye-opener for me after the strict opera budgets," she says.

While opera is "very glamorous", she says, it's done in intense six-to-eight-week bursts with a few performances a week and then it's gone.

"With Phantom it was 18 months, eight shows a week. It's a really different thing: that's how they're getting their money back."

And, she says, there were certainly plenty of money being spent on the production: "One of Marina [Prior]"s dresses cost $10,000 and she wore a cape over it almost the entire time so nobody saw it. It was a different world for me."

But she enjoyed it and got to work with both Anthony Warlow near the end of his run and the late Rob Guest when he came into the title role. Of course,in a show like From Broadway to Ballroom she gets to sing a range of material from different shows and much else besides even if it's only with one partner.

"Lachlan and I have been together for 15 years," she says - but she means that strictly in a professional and social context.

"We're both married to other people; we're just really good friends."

It's the first time they've toured together but they've performed together many times since they met many years ago.

"I was doing a show at Seagulls in Tweed Heads, a huge RSL," Beamish says, "and I needed a partner.

"Everyone recommended Lachlan."

On the strength of this, without having heard of Baker, she approached him and he took the job.

"It went really well," Beamish says.

So well that they have continued to perform together in between other jobs. One avenue Beamish has been exploring is the pro-am musical - she has provided the professional element in such shows as The Desert Song, Brigadoon and The Pirates of Penzance. While she may no longer be performing in opera, the desire to act a musical role on stage has never quite left her.