In tune with untalented performer

Angela Johnson and Michael Lee Porter, who are performing in the Fortune Theatre's production of "Souvenir". Photo by Craig Baxter.

Florence Foster Jenkins was an extraordinary woman.

She had no sense of rhythm, pitch or tone yet she gave elaborate charity concerts in New York, culminating in one at Carnegie Hall that sold out in three hours.

Her story is told in Souvenir, which opens at the Fortune Theatre on Saturday.

Frances was a wealthy woman, president of this and secretary of that and put on concerts to raise money for charity, director Lara Macgregor says.

''They were extensively advertised and she would put them on in the music room of the Ritz-Carlton, fill them and give generously to all sorts of different charities.''

The question Macgregor and her cast, Angela Johnson who plays Florence and Michael Lee Porter who plays Florence's accompanist and friend Cosmé McMoon, are trying to figure out is why people came to these concerts and stayed when she sounded so terrible; recordings of her singing can be heard on YouTube.

''There's something very endearing about her and she had a lot of money and was very generous, and that speaks to some people. She's delightful and we are getting to know her in the rehearsal room,'' Macgregor says.

Frances, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pensylvania in 1868, started learning piano when she was 8 and had a great love of music and knowledge of the operas and arias she sang. She was never in tune, although she clearly believed she was.

After her divorce in 1902 she earned a living as a teacher and pianist, but her parents' deaths left her a wealthy woman, then in her 40s, who was able to pursue the singing career she had always dreamed of.

She lived with St Clair Bayfield, an English actor and singer who had tried sheep farming in New Zealand.

He became her manager and their relationship lasted for the rest of her life.

In the play, her accompanist Cosmé McMoon tells the story of his relationship with Florence and the development of their friendship over more than a decade until her death in 1944, Macgregor says.

''She says `I'm not just looking for a pianist, I'm looking for a soulmate' - not in a lover's sense but in the sense she has someone there at her side the whole way who is not going to let her down.''

McMoon was gay, although Florence probably didn't realise this, according to Macgregor.

He is engaging, witty and dreams of making it big in New York, but partway through his relationship with Florence, he realises that he isn't selling much of his other music and he has to accept that accompanying her is it, she says.

''At first he had the same response that a lot of people had when they heard her sing, which was `Oh, my God, can she really be so oblivious to the fact that she cannot hold a tune?' He never told her outright and as the years went by he became very good friends with her and had a lot of admiration for her tenacity and drive.''

When she tells him they are going to have a concert at the prestigious Carnegie Hall and she's going to sing one of his original songs, he just about falls over.

He was born in Mexico to Irish parents so it's a Mexican song and she has maracas and a Mexican costume and it's tragically funny, Macgregor says.

She used to wear elaborate bejewelled costumes which she changed often during her concerts, and the play requires several costume changes.

Florence doesn't understand modern music and when she hears Cosmé singing Crazy Rhythm a Frank Sinatra song, she wants to know what it is, Macgregor says.

''He tries to teach it to her and attempts to sing with her but she just doesn't have any sense of rhythm. But he does come to admire the way she blindly moves forward in life. She doesn't seem to let the turkeys get her down. In fact, he becomes very protective of her, whereas in the beginning he was laughing behind his hand at her. Eventually he tries to protect her at all costs.''

He tried to persuade her not to have a recording made, but she did.

Listening to her recording of Mozart's Queen of the Night aria, she picks out moments she feels are not quite right and tells Cosmé the piano's out of tune.

''There's just absolutely no doubt, no sense of ownership in her own lack of ear, shall we say,'' Macgregor says.

Such a lack of self-awareness does exist. There are people out there who do that all the time, she says.

''You look today at The X Factor and American Idol and people believing they've got what it takes and the judges denouncing them in the first two seconds of singing, and they get right royally up in arms about how dare these judges not know what I'm capable of.''

There is a lack of self-perception that is really intriguing.

''Perhaps we all have that in some way - the way we see ourselves and others see us. There's always a gap because we are never in a position to look from an external point at ourselves. That strange thing when we hear our own voices recorded. The majority of us would say `do I really sound like that?'.''

See it
Souvenir, by Stephen Temperley, opens at the Fortune Theatre, Dunedin, on May 17.

Directed by Lara Macgregor, it features Angela Johnson, as Florence, and musical director Michael Lee Porter, as Cosmé.