Making an appearance at the Carnival is the thoroughly charming musical farce Van Park. Written and directed by Greg Appel, it stars Aussie music legends John Paul Young and Steve Kilbey as two aging out-of-touch rockers residing in a decrepit caravan park full of freaks and lost dreamers. Van Park made its debut at the inaugural Sydney Fringe Festival in 2010, and now it’s back and more fun than ever.
Kilbey is excited and enthusiastic about reprising his role of Nebauchadnezzar, a “washed-up and faded old hippie rock star” who’s ended up in a caravan park. The park is run by Young’s Akbar, another old rocker who once had a minor hit and is now a bitter, mean-spirited drunk and his wife, Gypsy Rose (played by Cora James), who was once a renowned torch singer.
“Yeah, I’m more a gentle, minstrel-y type [of faded rock star],” Kilbey drawls pleasantly, describing his character. “Akbar’s a drinker, and I spend the entire play smoking pot!
[In the play] “I believe that [Akbar’s and Gypsy Rose’s] child, who’s called Curly, is my child. And he’s the only normal one in the entire van park. And I’m always trying to take him under my wing – he wants to be a musician, and then this girl shows up at the park, an English backpacker, and Curly falls in love with her, but his father is very angry, and it all kind of goes wrong and we end up having a fight!”
Kilbey goes on to state that director Appel enjoyed his pretentious, big-mouthed personae so much that he instructed him to unleash his character on the audience after the intermission. “I come back in and roam around,” Kilbey laughs. “I insult the men and try to pick up their women!”
“It wasn’t hard for me to play a pot-smoking big mouth!” he adds with a chuckle. “I just fell into that role, I do not know how!”
Which begs the question – how exactly did Kilbey get involved with this theatrical escapade in the first place? “Haha, some theatrical agent rang me up and said that they were looking for a pot-smoking big mouth to play this washed-up rocker,” he explains. “I was like, ‘Why did you think of me?’”
With the twin star power of Young and Kilbey, an eccentric cast of characters, a moving coming of age story, and music provided by indie Sydney four-piece King Curly, Van Park would seem to have it all – an assessment Kilbey agrees with. Every character sings at least one song – “I sing a song called Working On The Big One, which explains what I’m all about and how I’m trying to work out the whole meaning of life,” he adds.
Although Kilbey concedes that the show is “maybe not the kind of thing you’d think I would be in,” he seems genuinely thrilled about the show’s selling points. “There’s lots of laughs, lots of good songs, some partial nudity, a lot of swearing, a lot of drinking and drug-taking, and … some violence!” he says with a flourish. “And a happy ending!”
BY THOMAS BAILEY
