Musical theatre star Scott Irwin on Cho Cho, the Madame Butterfly-inspired production set to hit Sydney and Melbourne.

Scott Irwin is one of Australia’s leading men in musical theatre, having starred in a range of productions including Hairspray, Les Misérables and Kiss Me Kate.

Cho Cho is his latest venture, a joint production from the National Theatre of China and Melbourne-based Playking Productions. Based on the story of Madame Butterfly, it is a bilingual production set in Shanghai that combines drama, puppetry, poetry and music.

Can you tell us a little bit about the background of Cho Cho (and your role)?

Cho Cho, (then Cho Cho San) was a chamber piece originally written by Daniel Keene in the early ’80s. It was a harsh, bleak take on the original Madame Butterfly story, with Daniel’s own unique take on this well-known tale. In The last few years, Peter Wilson (who was involved in the original production), worked with Ziyin Gantner from Playking Productions with a view to re-imagining the work as a bilingual  piece set in Shanghai (not Japan), and gradually the project gained momentum, exciting both the National Theatre of China and The Victorian Arts Centre. Daniel Keene’s writing is still there, but the...