A Vote for Cynthia - Cynthia Fortitude for Prime Minister!

Waikato Times Review
What: A Vote for Cynthia
Where: Victorian Garden Conservatory, Hamilton Gardens
When: February 23, 24 and 25, 2009
Reviewed by: Gail Pittaway
For those unlucky enough to have not encountered Cynthia Fortitude, she's an aging opera singer who has devoted her life to taking opera to the less fortunate nations of the world.
You might call her a missionary of song, she so easily converted her opening-night audience into a celestial chorus, a rugby crowd and a team of marching boys.
Previously, she's shared her talents in productions of dreadful indigenous opera about pinus radiata and rugby.
As her touring ends, she wants to write an opera about a great inspiring Kiwi politician, but can find none worthy of the musical treatment her voice and talent can produce.
That is, until she realises that if she becomes prime minister, she can write the opera about herself. It's a plan worthy of any spin doctor and there's considerable spoof on political slogans - Face the Future with Fortitude and policy all about building new opera houses and forming men's marching teams for bad boys.
She even sanitises her hands after shaking ours. Helen Moulder is delicious; apparently bumbling through the show, she nonetheless manages all the music, power-point, camera and lighting cues alone. She's also able to play the Funeral March and Gilbert and Sullivan on ukulele. In fact sing like mad is not only what she does - it's what she makes us want to do as well.
Funny, mad, but steely; she's an absolute gem who get's my vote.

For more information, visit: http://www.willowproductions.co.nz