Every night, five minutes before curtain, two musical theatre veterans lock themselves in a dressing room and let it all out. That is the entire premise of Five Minute Call, and I am obsessed.
The eight-episode comedy, created by and starring Helen Dallimore and Simon Burke, is now streaming on Stan, with all its short-form episodes compiled into one marvellous omnibus.
Dallimore plays Helen Barrymore, an actress playing Sal in a fictional long-running production, and Burke plays Simon, her co-star playing Jack. The show-within-the-show is Ray Meagher Presents The Shiralee The Musical, a gloriously creaky outback Australian adventure, and it is the perfect, specific target for eight episodes of insider theatre comedy.
Helen is a magnificent creation. Once the undisputed queen of the stage, she is now battling escalating vocal problems, an ambitious understudy waiting in the wings, and the creeping suspicion the industry might be ready to move on without her. Dallimore plays every glare and tightly controlled eruption like a full-blown opening-night meltdown, and somehow makes a woman this vain and furious completely loveable.
Burke’s Simon is the perfect foil, utterly convinced international stardom is one US pilot away, no matter how many humiliating setbacks pile up. His chemistry with Dallimore is the real engine of the show: two performers who clearly know the specific exhaustion of doing the same show eight times a week, bickering like siblings who would still go to war for each other.
The whole series plays out almost entirely in Helen’s dressing room, which becomes a revolving door for agents, dressers, musical directors, understudies and stage veterans who have seen it all. Every visitor brings a fresh crisis or a new piece of chaos, and the comedy is fast, filthy and gloriously specific, with plenty of jokes that will land hardest for anyone who has ever worked in theatre, live events, or any workplace running on pretending the chaos is under control.
Trevor Ashley, an Olivier Award nominee for The Producers in the West End, is a standout as Winston T. Ford, Helen’s appalling manager from WTF Management, who turns up dangling incriminating video evidence.
Barnaby and Barbara, the show’s “Baa Baas”, are the fresh-faced up-and-comers doubling as Equity reps. They’re played by Joel Granger and Chaska Halliday and they’re a joy every time they appear.
Genevieve Lemon is a highlight as Tinkerbell, forever popping in with a gentle reminder that somehow makes things worse.
The in-show dialogue (that we get to hear through various rehearsals) leans hard into Ray Meagher’s most famous Home and Away catchphrases, including “stone the flaming crows” and “bloody mongrels”, and by the finale, a Ray Meagher impersonator (Jonathan Biggins) actually turns up backstage, triggering chaos in the wig room.
My favourite moment is a throwaway line from understudy Nicole (Jessica Spies), who asks Simon “which was your favourite window?”, a nod to his years presenting Play School. I am still laughing about it.
Other stars rounding out the backstage world include a surprise cameo from Georgie Parker as herself, plus the characters of Dirk (Maxwell Simon), Belinda (Catherine Van-Davies), Associate Musical Director Timothy (Hayden Barltrop), dresser Teresa (Jillian O’Dowd) and choreographer Mr Cha-Cha (Strickly Ballroom Choreographer John ‘Cha-Cha’ O’Connell), all adding to the sense of a show family that totally unhinged.
For anyone who, like me, didn't clock it straight away: The Shiralee is a real and much-loved piece of Australian storytelling. D'Arcy Niland's 1955 novel follows Macauley, an itinerant swagman wandering the outback with his young daughter Buster in tow after he walks out on her unfaithful mother, the title itself an old bush term for the swag a traveller carries, and by extension the burden he can't quite put down. It became a 1957 film starring Peter Finch, then a popular 1987 ABC miniseries, and in a lovely bit of timing, Catherine Văn-Davies, who plays Belinda in Five Minute Call, recently starred in Sydney Theatre Company's own stage adaptation of The Shiralee, written by Kate Mulvany and directed by Jessica Arthur, at the Sydney Opera House's Drama Theatre.
Dallimore is a Helpmann Award winner who originated the role of Glinda in Wicked opposite Idina Menzel in the West End, and starred in Here Come the Habibs and is the narrator of Married At First Sight. Burke, who won his first AFI Award at 13 for The Devil’s Playground and later reprised the role in its AACTA and Logie-winning miniseries sequel, has led Australian and West End stage productions including Les Misérables, La Cage aux Folles, The Sound of Music and Moulin Rouge The Musical.
Praise to the producers behind it: Gus Murray of Sugary Rum Productions, Bec Bignall of Cockatoo Co Lab, and Robert Patterson of Arenamedia.
What makes Five Minute Call so good is the warmth underneath all that bitchiness. This is not just a show about egotistical performers behaving badly, it is a love letter to the strange, loyal, slightly unhinged family formed by people who do the same job under pressure every single night, as its creators put it, “the beautiful, broken lunatics who keep showing up, hitting their light, and pretending it’s all perfectly under control.” If you have ever set foot backstage, or just love a sharp, specific showbiz in-joke, this one is unmissable.
Watch Five Minute Call [IMMEDIATELY] on Stan.
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