Reg Livermore, Pitt Street, Sydney, 1965 (printed 2020)

Robert McFarlane

inkjet print on paper (sheet: 60 cm x 60.3 cm)

Reg Livermore AO (b. 1938), stage and television entertainer, began performing as a teenager, hiring local venues to mount his own pantomimes, including Snow White at the Mosman Town Hall in 1955. Having left school before graduation, he began his professional career at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1957. There, his first job was as understudy for Barry Humphries and Gordon Chater in Around the Loop. After a brief time in London he returned to the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli, where he was mentored by Hayes Gordon. Two and a half years in Melbourne with the Union Theatre Repertory Company followed. In the mid 1960s he guested with the new South Australian Theatre Company before returning to Sydney for a fifteen-month stint in A Cup of Tea, A Bex and a Good Lie Down with Ruth Cracknell. The show was his entrée into television; he hosted a Saturday night show called I'm Alright Now before appearing regularly on The Mavis Bramston Show. After appearing in Hair in 1969, he was in Jesus Christ Superstar. His big break came with the role of Frank'n'Furter in The Rocky Horror Show in 1974. The following year, his own Betty Blokk Buster Follies played to record crowds in capital cities around the country in 1975. In the late 1980s, having spent a few years tending his garden in the Blue Mountains, he resurfaced on television in Burke's Backyard; he later spent nine years on Our House. He has since performed in his own theatre restaurant show The Thank You Dinner, in Gilbert and Sullivan at the Sydney Opera House and the State Theatre, and as Professor Higgins in the touring production of My Fair Lady. His autobiography, Chapters and Chances, was published in 2003.