Perth Cabaret Festival presents Brendan Hanson’s Leave it to the Keeper: The Songs My Fathers Taught Me

Brendan Hanson’s dad Noel, a miner from Broken Hill, named his son Brendan Craig in honour of Hawthorn Football Club player Brendan Edwards and Australian Test cricketer Ian Craig.

Unfortunately, those high hopes of similar sporting achievement were soon dashed, with Hanson admitting he was unable to kick a football until after he had studied ballet during his musical theatre training at WA Academy of Performing Arts during the 1990s.

“Dad found a way to understand he had raised a storytelling, singing, dancing, jazz hands me,” 51-year-old Hanson laughs.

Noel’s job as a mine site locomotive driver soon made way for the Hanson family to leave Broken Hill and move all over Australia, from Karratha and Adelaide to Newcastle and the Sunshine Coast, until they finally settled in Mildura in country Victoria for Hanson’s high school years.

The nomadic lifestyle put Hanson in good stead following his graduation from WAAPA in 1994, spending the next decade touring flat chat in musical theatre and opera.

“I lived out of a suitcase and had fluffy robes and breakfasts in five-star hotels, touring with productions of Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Miserables and Singin’ in the Rain for David Atkins,” he explains.

“Basically, all of my 20s was spent on the road, but I wanted a real life, I wanted a family, I wanted children, and I just didn’t see that happening while I was living a hotel kind of gypsy life. So my partner and I moved to Perth because all of her family was here. There was a draw of, in some ways, returning home because I trained at WAAPA and it felt like the natural move.

“It took me a while to embrace that it’s actually okay to stay and be in one place. My sons have grown up in one house (in Padbury), which is pretty wild considering I had 13. I guess you do tend to give your children something that you didn’t have, maybe thinking that it’s better, but I don’t know, it’s just how the cookie crumbles.”

Hanson has carved out an eclectic career with Perth’s arts companies, from productions with WA Opera and Black Swan State Theatre Company, to recent roles in The Addams Family, Peter Pan, Chicago and All Shook Up, while also teaching at WAAPA and privately.

A love of cabaret sees him set to premiere new show Leave it to the Keeper: The Songs My Fathers Taught Me, presented by Perth International Cabaret Festival at Downstairs at the Maj.

He returns to the venue after performing Homeward Bound and Gagged at its reopening 24 years ago.

“It was the first opportunity that I’ve had in my career to take the mask off,” he says.

“Cabaret is bare faced, there is a level of intimacy to it that I really love, where I get to be myself, not a character… to tell stories and to sing and hold that space.”

While Noel died 17 years ago, soon after the birth of Hanson’s second son, the memory of his dad’s voice being the first Hanson ever heard is something the performer holds on to dearly.

“Dad used to sing when he cooked in the kitchen or when he pottered around in his shed. He had a beautiful singing voice, but he didn’t sing out, he didn’t sing for anyone else but himself,” Hanson recounts.

“The show was a nod to my dad to begin with, but it’s also an acknowledgment that no artist gets to where they are without an incredible amount of support. I wanted to acknowledge all of those men, my teachers and producers and directors, the mentors that I’ve had throughout my career.

“I feel like I’m stepping into that role these days, now that I’ve got silver hair, getting to mentor others. I just wanted to dip my lid and acknowledge them for the investment they made in me that enables me to still be an artist and a storyteller at 51.”

The show will feature a diverse setlist of songs that imprinted on Hanson while growing up, along with some he has performed during his career.

“I grew up on country music, so Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond, with some (Stephen) Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown,” he shares.

“I hope audiences get to know me a little better. Maybe it will stir some nostalgia in them, helping them reflect upon the people who were instrumental in helping them become who they are too.”

Leave it to the Keeper: The Songs My Fathers Taught Me is at Downstairs at the Maj, His Majesty’s Theatre, June 20 and 22. Perth International Cabaret Festival is on June 10 to 23. Tickets at perthcabaret.com.au.