21 June 2009
HAYDEN TEE is a New Zealand theatre and cabaret performer. He last appeared in the concert Generation Why, a new spin on the 1980s, which showed at the Wintergarden in Auckland. Tee has performed in the stage productions of Cats, Little Women, Dead Man Walking and Titanic: The Musical. He has released a self-titled debut album, which is available for download online at digital music stores including iTunes. Leg 1 11am: I wake up at this time - which may seem late but when performing evenings my body clock can get quite late. After finishing a show and getting home it is never earlier than 11pm, the adrenaline is pumping and it is hard to get to bed before 3am most nights. I find it hard to eat breakfast during the first two hours of the day, the thought of food makes me feel a little sick but with a two-show day I force myself to
get down two pieces of toast, both with light Kraft peanut butter and a cup of tea with trim milk and two sugars.
11.55am: Our first show starts at 1pm, which means we have to be at the theatre before noon, I love having cups of tea during the show and I especially like drinking a hot drink while warming up vocally. Before my song today I ended up having five cups of tea. Lucky I don't drink coffee. My dressing room at the Civic is on level six and the stage is on level one so during the show I have been using the staircase as a bit of a cardio workout walking or running up and down it nine times each show.
4pm: At this time I go to one of our favourite hang-outs with fellow cast members, Elise and Jodie, to Tosca on Vulcan Lane in the CBD. I share a plate of bread and dips (pumpkin, pesto, sundried tomato) and then a salad made up of cherry tomatoes, avocado, baby spinach, cucumber, red onions, grilled chicken and haloumi with a balsamic vinaigrette. I felt the need for something sweet so I dropped into Mrs Higgins on the way home and grabbed an Anzac biscuit. Between shows Elise has been letting me join in on her workouts. Because we are only in town for a few weeks we have had to be very creative in regards to exercise as joining a gym would be pointless. We used large orange- juice bottles, olive-oil drums and vases from our hotel as weights and did a 45-minute circuit workout targeting biceps, triceps, abs, chest, shoulders and back.
7pm: During the second show I had another four cups of tea and ran or walked up and down the six flights of stairs nine times.
9pm: I had a bit of a sugar craving so I raided my drawer of opening- night goodies and had four jelly jubes to satisfy my sweet tooth.
11pm: At the end of the show a friend was flying in from Sydney so I knew we were heading to a bar for a few drinks, a chicken Caesar wrap was my choice for a quick meal on the way there. We went to a bar for two beers and a gin and tonic before heading to bed at around 3am with a 1.5 litre bottle of water close by to sip during the night.
Nutritionist Jacquie Dale says:
Exercise is usually the first thing to go when you're away from home in unfamiliar surroundings. But travelling or working odd hours shouldn't derail your fitness routine. I love the way Hayden fits his workouts into his timetable and uses everyday objects as exercise equipment. When you stop and think about it we don't really need fancy gym equipment to stay fit. There are a million opportunities for us everyday to be more active.
All it takes is a little creativity and the will to be healthier. Exercise is cumulative - that means a little adds up to a lot over a week.
Try parking further away from work, taking the stairs, do 20 pushups before you eat lunch, tighten your abdominals at the traffic lights, throw away the remote control and fidget more.
Even fidgeting burns around 400 calories a day. I'm tempted to point out that the long gaps without eating coupled with the lack of fibre in Hayden's diet do little to keep his metabolism in top gear. Firstly, I'd remove the 10 teaspoons of sugar in his tea, then I'd tell him the truth about light peanut butter. Unadulterated peanut butter, containing just peanuts and salt, is a very healthy food, but the light version has had all of the heart- healthy fat removed. Most people assume that with 25% less fat, the light peanut butter must a better choice.
What they don't know is that the good fat is removed and replaced with sugar. So how do you know which peanut butter to buy? Forget the nutrition panel, go straight to the ingredients list and look for just two ingredients - peanuts and salt.
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22 June 2009
Murray Bramwell
The Australian
CABARET
Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Generation Why? Hayden Tee, Dunstan Playhouse June 10. Magpie Blues. Ursula Yovich, The Space June 17.
Festival runs until June 20 at Adelaide Festival Centre. Bookings: BASS 131 246
It perhaps comes as no surprise that a show called Generation Why? raises more questions than it answers.
Now in his late 20s, talented singer Hayden Tee is contemplating his Saturn Return, that point in the astrological cycle when thresholds are crossed and life choices are consolidated. For Tee everything is connected: his life history (and those of his antecedents in small-town northern New Zealand), and a century of war, pestilence, technological revolution, MTV and Pac-Man.
At times earnest, often convoluted, Tee illustrates his place in the cycles of the cosmos with murky back-projections of family snapshots and NZ Tourism promos. Among this, ably accompanied by pianist and arranger, Nigel Ubrihien, he sings his heart out with such 1980s anthems as In the Air Tonight, Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades and a mawkish Christopher Cross/Enya medley of Sailing and Orinoco Flow.
There is something endearingly artless about Tee's provincial Kiwi memoir but, when he goes into a stage persona, things get really interesting. Inhabiting John Hinckley from Sondheim's Assassins, he delivers a chilling performance of Unworthy of Your Love and demonstrates why Hayden Tee is such a hot property in music theatre.
Ursula Yovich's Magpie Blues is also a personal work: in her case it's about growing up in Darwin with an Aboriginal mother from Arnhem Land and a father born in Serbia. As she puts it, she's a Serborigine. It is a story infused with sadness, love, separation and dislocated cultural identity. Like the magpie, she is neither black nor white, disconnected from both her skin ties and a Europe she has never seen.
A premiere production for the Cabaret Festival, it is undercooked.
Yovich has an ambitious amount of script, and she lost her thread a number of times. The presentation also seems emotionally raw. The material is close to her heart and tears are often near the surface. For the performer's sake, this show has some steadying to do.
But, for Yovich, music is her great joy and she sings everything from Fields of Gold and Let it Be to Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin.
Her range is impressive: Bocelli after Caruso, the theme from Monkey, some haunting originals and (with excellent support from the band and MD Peter Casey) a telling rendition of Over the Rainbow.
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