The Man with the Child in his Eyes

The Vanguard supper club. At 8 pm the lights are slowly dimmed. A discernible ripple moves through the darkened room. The band revs into gear, the curtains part and Paul Capsis is centre stage. The crowd erupts into applause and whistles, but Capsis stands, perfectly still, daring us, almost commanding us to look.

The first thing you notice about Capsis is his size. Diminutive, slim, fine-boned and yet within a few seconds of his entrance, he fills the stage with his presence.  Just for a minute, the musicians fade into the soft light, the bright reds of the cabaret curtains and the tiny chain of lights above them recede, the waitresses pause with fully loaded plates, seeming to pay homage to the man with the dark sunglasses, sequined jacket and hair swept up into a loose bun. The atmosphere speaks louder than the band: Paul Capsis is in the house.

His entrance has the desired effect. Capsis understands the art of stillness, how powerful a tool it can be. And those who are familiar with his performances know that any minute a spring-loaded coil of energy will be unleashed from that core of intense focus, sending the frozen pose back a few minutes into the past. When he does finally speak, he draws the audience in with natural ease and camped-up banter but underlying this is the sense that he is using the crowd to charge himself up.  Fully charged, he feeds off the audience’s first response and in return delivers a song with raw and playful energy.

‘I’m not going to channel anything just yet,’ he tells us. 

The crowd whistles and waits, eager to see just what or who is coming next.  Because the who part is what the anticipation is all about. Will it be Janis? Or Aretha? Will it be Paul Capsis as Paul Capsis perhaps? Does Paul Capsis ever perform as himself?

Close your eyes, and you could be listening to Judy Garland or the frantic tremolo from a gospel choir. Capsis is a consummate mimic, but never does he ask us to believe that he is these artists.  Despite sounding and moving like them, he brings his own interpretation to their work, and it is this quality that separates him from the impersonators and the tribute singers that clog the clubs. It is his honesty as a performer, his willingness to allow the audience to see him in a heightened emotional state, and his sense of joy in performing the material that transfixes those who are fortunate enough to see him on stage. He seems lit from within.

Despite the sparkling blue eye shadow, the kohl-rimmed eyes and the abundance of bling, the concept of ‘drag queen’ cannot be applied to him nor can the term ‘female impersonator.’ The latter two can, for some people, encompass a hint of misogyny or parody at the least. Not with Capsis. The clothes are androgynous; his movements can change from the elegantly fluid to the raunchy rock gestures that are the preserve of metal rockers and then to a shimmy that would give the best belly dancer something to think about.  Capsis crosses gender, style, and vocal genres, making it difficult to define what exactly he does. There are the influences of vaudeville and cabaret, but these influences are given a mystical and very individual interpretation. It would be difficult in a few words to pin Capsis down. But perhaps that enigmatic quality is just what defines him.

One week later. 

Zimt Café, Surry Hills. 2.30 pm. Venetian minimalist décor.  Music at conversation level. The coffee machine hums. Stripped of the make-up and in street clothes, Paul Capsis entrance is much less dramatic. It is hard to believe that this is the same person gyrating on the stage the week before. Capsis voice is soft, and his demeanour is of someone who is at ease with himself.

‘I allow myself three coffees a week,’ Capsis says. ‘So, they have to be good ones.’

Ah ha, discipline. This will be interesting. Wild on stage, contained in real life, perhaps? The public and private Paul Capsis in one week.  

‘I’m quirky, drawn to quirky things,’ he tells me when asked about his diverse roles. That very quirkiness, however, his trademark today, did not help him in the early days.

Capsis was born in the inner city of Sydney in 1964 to immigrant parents. A Greek-Egyptian father and a Maltese mother ensured there was a steady supply of musical influences in the house.  His mother loved the divas of the sixties, and as a child, Capsis would sing along. The significance of the influences never occurred to him. He was too young. He watched the dancing at functions and thought that it was just what Greeks do at parties.  Back then, a feature of Maltese parties was the ancient art of Ghana (pronounced ‘aana’) the traditional folk music of the island. Ghana has many forms, and one of them involves playing the same chord over and over on a guitar whilst the participants improvise lyrics and rhyme them on themes from everyday life, simple stories about work and play. The lyrics in Ghana are not that important; it is the quality of the voice telling the stories that takes centre stage. Capsis remembers gyrating wildly for attention and people commenting on the child with the frenetic dancing ability. He would dance so furiously that the adults said he would combust. They would rush over with water, trying to calm him down. He liked that attention. So, he danced some more. And he mimicked what he heard. He was a hit at parties.

After completing high school, Capsis found his niche in community theatre, where he honed his skills on the stage while working very ordinary part-time jobs to survive. 

‘I learnt on the job,’ he says.  ‘And I was very determined.’

He thrived within community theatre circles, but when he tried to make an upwards move, he hit a wall of prejudice. Perhaps it was more ignorance; people did not know quite what to make of him. They did not get it, he says. Today being gay, out there and of exotic ethnic origin might be de rigueur in performance circles, but twenty years ago it was not seen as interesting or as something that might fast track a career in the performing arts. He was taken on by one of Sydney’s top theatrical agents who recognised his talent but who also saw problems. On their first meeting, she cut right to the chase.

 ‘She looked at me and said, ‘Darling, you are gay, you’re obvious, and you’re a wog. Be realistic, how much work do you think you are going to get?’

Someone of lesser courage might have packed their bags in resignation and gone off to do a computer course. Instead, Capsis got angry. It was not a negative anger, he says. 

‘Not the kind of anger that makes you want to get depressed and self-destruct because that’s what people expect you to do. It was more determination. I was determined that despite my ‘limitations’ I was going to be successful.’

Capsis dabbled in drag-queen for two years but ultimately found it limiting, realising its potential to pigeon-hole him into a lifetime of exceedingly long eyelashes and glittery floor-length robes. There was more to Paul Capsis than a stereotype. There was a man with a voice; a voice that could sing a lullaby, scream a rock song, climb the scales of a soprano and plummet the depths of an Afro-American spiritual. Slowly the word got around. Here was an astounding talent. A voice that could do it all.   

Reading Capsis performance history is like eating minestrone. Everything is there. He moves fluidly between the highbrow, the middle ground of talk show television to the glam trash of Mardi Gras festivals. He is done the classics, sung at the Sydney Opera House, played Castrone in Volpone in the stage adaptation by the Sydney Theatre Company and performed with Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He has worked with Company B Belvoir and NIDA and has read poetry on ABC Radio National. He has worked and recorded an album with Sydney’s premier gospel choir, The Café at the Gates of Salvation, and has sung with the Soweto Gospel Choir. Cut to the gay and lesbian fringe festivals, and he will be there too.

‘It wasn’t a plan to be that diverse, but because I’m quirky in the way I look and dress and the way I use my voice, I get offered interesting roles,’ he says. ‘It’s not what other performers get to do. I can transform and not have to stick to one mode of performance. I also get bored easily and need to move on from certain phases.’

Capsis has been surprised by his success. In 1998 he won the Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Lead Role for his part in the film Head On and was nominated at the AFI Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a lead role. The film, set in the early eighties, explores the life of a young Greek boy played by Alex Dimitriades, caught up in the hedonistic sub-culture of promiscuous gay sex.  Capsis played Johnny, a marginalised cross-dresser who transforms into Toula, rejected by his father and an object of derision in the Greek community. Doing the film was both fun and difficult, Capsis tells me. It also helped him move on from playing roles where he wore a dress. 

‘A cathartic experience,’ he says of the film.

Capsis has performed in New York, London, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Vienna. He has twice won the Helpmann Award, in 2006 for Best Contemporary Concert Performer and in 2002 for Best Live Musical Presentation. He has also won several Green Room Awards for Best Cabaret Performer.

One of the more challenging performances he undertook in 2006 was director Barry Kosky’s eight-hour epic, The Lost Echo, based on mythological stories from the poems of Ovid. I tapped into my Greek angst for that one, he says. Capsis says that Kosky has been pivotal to his career. They first worked together in 1998 on The Burlesque Tour and later Boulevard Delirium in 2004 which Kosky wrote for Capsis. Boulevard Delirium traced the history of music from gospel to cabaret and has been performed in Australia and overseas. 

‘Kosky works you hard,’ he tells me. ‘He knows what I am capable of, and he pushes me that little bit harder.’

Being pushed means having the physical energy and lung capacity to sing and dance for hours. Under that, quirkiness is a disciplined performer. Capsis treats his voice as an instrument. He works out every day at the gym, limits coffee and avoids cigarette smoke. 

I end my time with Paul Capsis by telling him how much I loved his version of Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes. 

‘I don’t often do that song,’ he says. ‘It makes me so sad singing it.’

It is significant that Capsis chose to forgo the falsetto of Kate Bush to sing this song in his own voice. There were a few seconds of silence just before the applause; Capsis was Capsis when he sang that song, and the room was spellbound.

Paul Capsis is warm and engaging. In the time I spent with him, we discussed books, protein powders, throat care, the best way to defrost chickens, gas ovens, multiculturalism, religion, and a plethora of other topics. Capsis has a serious side, but he also has a sense of fun; the exuberance and the mischievous qualities of the naughty child who will insist on doing it his way.    

I ask him about his next role.

‘Something big,’ he says. ‘I’m not at liberty to say so just yet. But my role in it is one that’s a bit left of field.’

‘As you or in costume?’

‘I like the costumes and make-up. I feel more comfortable. I feel like I am giving people a real show. The next role is quirky, dark, and interesting.

A lot like Paul Capsis.