Lachlann Lawton’s stellar year gets even better: receiving his first nomination for major WA arts award

Bunbury star of the stage Lachlann Lawton has added another accomplishment to his stellar year by receiving his first nomination for the Performing Arts WA Awards. Mr Lawton is nominated for the outstanding performer in a supporting role award for his dual role as Cinderella’s prince and the wolf in West Australian Opera’s production of Into the Woods. Into the Woods is a popular 80s musical by composer and lyricist late Stephen Sondheim that is a darker retelling of several Brothers Grimm fairytales. The musical has seen several runs on Broadway and the West End after its debut in 1987, and was adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 2014. Lawton — typically performing in the opera space — said he was blown away by his nomination since this was his first professional musical theatre performance of his career. “I never thought it would be me,” he said. “I well and truly got my musical theatre chops down in Bunbury. I’ve not done one in Perth, so I wasn’t too sure I’d be right for it.” Lawton said it was a challenge changing his singing and performance style from opera to musical theatre. “It’s like learning to drive a new car, it’s still a car but it’s still different,” he said. “There’s a lot more speaking — the hardest part is speaking. In opera everything is ready-written for you and has to be done a certain way, with acting like this there’s so much you get to make up, it’s all up to you.” He said another one of the hardest parts was the choreography that came with it, something not too common in opera but vital in most musical theatre performers. “It was a real trial by fire,” he said. “We’d rock up to rehearsal and all the opera singers would be standing around the piano having a cuppa while all the musical theatre performers were on the mat stretching, so we gradually learned how to stretch and move ourselves.” Apart from being his first musical theatre role, Into the Woods saw Lawton doing his first double-duty performance, playing two completely different roles in one show. “The trickiest part was the damn costume change . . . going from the wolf to the prince was quite the challenge,” he said. “I think we pulled it off though. The response I wanted from the two different characters was the audience thinking two actors were playing those roles, not just me.” Lawton will expand his musical career further after being cast as Anthony Hope in the Victoria Opera’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, in September. He said he is excited to be sticking with a familiar composer, as both Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd were written by the same man. “It’s another Sondheim, so it’s as close as you can get to opera without it actually being opera,” Lawton said. Sweeney Todd runs at the Melbourne Arts Centre from September 14-21, while the 2024 Performing Arts WA Awards take place on August 12 at Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth.