The tense nature of talent shows for children makes them perfect for comedy, Ben Miller, star of Razzle Dazzle, tells Michael Dwyer
The exuberant new Australian comedy, Razzle Dazzle: A Journey into Dance, is a timely satire on this era of obsession with fame and celebrity. Formed as a mock documentary, the film is often uproariously funny as it follows the misadventures of ambitious pre-teen dancers and the pushy parents and anxiously insecure teachers who enter them in contests. These events are so popular in Australia that there are more than 700 every year.
English actor and comedian Ben Miller is admirably deadpan as Mr Jonathon, the pretentious tutor who devises absurdly naive political themes for his young dancers, and Kerry Armstrong captures the driven, obsessive nature of Justine, the stage mother from hell, who describes her daughter as "an Ikea of talent".
Coincidentally, Miller's earliest TV success was in the series Armstrong & Miller, in which his comedy partner was another Armstrong, Alexander. Their show was described in the Guardian as "Samuel Beckett as sketch comedy".
Miller went on to star in the popular TV series, The Worst Week of My Life and Primeval, and to feature in such movies as Johnny English with Rowan Atkinson, Birthday Girl with Nicole Kidman, and The Actors, written and directed by Conor McPherson.
When we met recently, I asked Miller if he'd had a stage mother like the Justine character in Razzle Dazzle. "In fact, my mother was the opposite of Justine in that she didn't want me to become an actor," he says. "My parents wanted me to be an academic like my father. I was studying physics at Cambridge. I enjoyed that, but I didn't feel I had a career in it, so I ran away to join the circus quite late, in my mid-20s."
At university he was drawn to performing with the Cambridge Footlights, following in the tradition of such alumni as David Frost, Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry. "It really was a just horrible bar in a basement where we were all taking baby steps," he says. "It doesn't really help being in Footlights. Because so many successful people have started there, there are such expectations."
Just as the young dancers in Razzle Dazzle have such high hopes when they enter contests, even though most of them will have to lose.
"That's what's fascinating about it all," Miller says. "It's mired with contradictions. On the one hand, common sense tells you that it's good to encourage children to try and attain their best. On the other hand, common sense also tells you that these are very fragile, vulnerable young people and you don't want to break their spirit before it's even had a chance to grow.
"What makes it a good subject for comedy or drama is that it's rife with tension. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Before we started shooting, I went to one of those eisteddfods that are massively popular in Australia and it was like a Nazi rally. There were thousands of people, amazing costumes, and fantastic dancers, a lot of them trained by professional theatre choreographers. The pressure on these children is enormous, and everyone takes it tremendously seriously."
THE FILM TAPS into the present phenomenon of intensely competitive reality TV shows, which dominate broadcast schedules around the world. "Everyone wants to be famous," Miller says, "but what's good about the children in the film is that at least they are doing something worthwhile and learning a craft. It's similar to what happens if you take up acting. It's just as ruthless, because you're constantly being judged and always on the line."
On a subliminal level, the film prompts concern regarding the sexualisation of pre-pubescent girls, through some of the costumes they wear and by having them perform songs such as Big Spender that are inappropriate for their age.
"It is very uncomfortable, isn't it?" Miller says. "It has an element of those strange beauty pageants they have for children in America. What's in the film is not exaggerated at all.
"The film loves dance, but it's also tongue-in-cheek the way it's written, because it is able to see it from the outside. The children in the film weren't given the script. They didn't even know what the story was. They just had to learn their dance routines. So we got these wonderful, totally natural performances from them. Most of the credit for that goes to Darren Ashton, the director, who was brilliant with the children. They were completely living in that world, like the characters they play."
Miller himself had to take dance lessons to play Mr Jonathon in the movie, and his tutor was no less than John "Cha Cha" O'Connell, the acclaimed choreographer of Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. "I'm no dancer, I can tell you," Miller says. "I hadn't thought through the practicalities of that until I went to Australia before we started shooting. I had a month of training from this marvellous choreographer. He is one of the best in the world, but I could never nail the dancing. It's something you have to learn when you are so much younger, although I felt comfortable enough to carry off the scenes where I have to run a dance class."
AT A TIME when so many people in show business think they can change the world, Miller has fun playing Mr Jonathon, a character called a "cause slut" for imposing simplistic treatments of serious themes - child labour, global warming, the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban - on the dance routines he concocts for his young pupils.
"It's good to have political opinions, but I think drama should be like football, which is at its best when you have two good, evenly matched teams," Miller says. "When there is a political message in drama, the arguments for and against should be equally matched. If one side is emphasised at the expense of the other, it's hard to buy the drama as a viewer, even if you agree with the political side it presents. The really great dramatists, such as Shakespeare, are completely equivocal. People are still arguing today about The Merchant of Venice and whether it is the most racist play of all time, or the most groundbreaking anti-racism play. Really good drama has that quality."
One of Miller's happiest memories of working in TV drama was on the two-part Malice Aforethought (2005). "We made that in Ireland," he says. "I was in Dublin for a couple of months and I loved it. I played a doctor whose wife bullies him and he decides to kill her. His mistress threatens to turn him in and then he tries to kill her."
Miller recently finishing filming a new sketch series with Alexander Armstrong for transmission shortly on BBC 1, and it will be followed in January by an ITV series, Moving Wallpaper, devised by Tony Jordan, who wrote Life on Mars and Hustle.
The intriguing-sounding Moving Wallpaper takes its title from a derogatory term for TV soap opera. "It's a really clever and exciting series," Miller says. "I loved Life on Mars, and when I heard he had written a comedy, I really wanted to do it. The series takes the form of two different shows. One is Echo Beach, which is a soap opera about surfing in Cornwall and stars Martine McCutcheon and Jason Donovan. Then there's a behind-the-scenes show called Moving Wallpaper, which is a comedy that takes place on the set of Echo Beach. Martine, Jason and the other actors play themselves in that show, while I play the producer of the series.
"The two shows will run back-to-back each night, starting with Moving Wallpaper, which will have all the background of what's going on in the other show, and it will be followed directly by the latest episode of the soap we are making, Echo Beach. A lot of what happens in the first show pays off in the second. For example, there's a joke in which Susie Amy from Footballers' Wives says that she will bestow a certain sexual favour on me as the producer of Echo Beach if I give her a line in the show. Then you see the next episode of Echo Beach and she's got a line in it. It's very funny."
Razzle Dazzle: A Journey into Dance is now on general release