Over 35 years as a thespian, she's played Shakespeare, New York socialites and the bull dyke prison warden from hell in Prisoner, Australia's most successful cult soap opera ever. Still, the prospect of going boldly forth onto the 1997 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival stage in her first ever one woman show, The Screw Is Loose, has Maggie Kirkpatrick more than a little nervous. Phillipe Cahill looks on as a not-so-new Aussie cabaret star is born... 

"I'm terrified, of course!"

Not that you'd know it. Maggie Kirkpatrick - Aussie camp icon and acting legend - is sitting across from me in an Oxford Street cafe laughing awkwardly at the prospect of her first ever one woman cabaret show. But her wickedly bright eyes and smiling face tell a different story.

"Actually, at this moment I don't really feel desperately afraid about it, because doing this show is sort of out there somehow in the future. But the days are slipping by and it's going to be here before I know it and there's no turning back now. I've just got to keep on with it.

Brave, hopeful words which are a pleasure to hear. The last time I interviewed Kirkpatrick - almost two years ago to the day - it was a vastly different scenario. At the time it was quite apparent that this generous, kind-hearted if somewhat gruff woman was feeling a bit old, tired and disillusioned. Her acting career was ailing, fame and fortune a mere wisp of a dream from days of yore. Moreover, the inevitable progress of menopause had taken its hormonal toll on her general state of mind and well-being.

"They were lean times, real lean times, yeah," she reminisces philosophically. "But then that's the way it goes, doesn't it? You can't ride high all the time."

Still, that's of no consequence today. For the Maggie Kirkpatrick before me is looking exceptionally hale, happy and relaxed, complete with a very sleek looking and funky new buzz cut. Well, she should. After a dramatic slump of some years, Kirkpatrick's acting career is once again on a definite up, with film and stage work booked in both here and abroad. Right now she's particularly happy to be back on comfortable home turf, following a full-on year spent working devilishly hard in the UK.

"It's been great. I came back from England in July, as you know, after a terrific time doing Prisoner Cell Block H, The Musical (a Mike Walsh co-production) and we had a terrific run on the West End. It was a bit of a surprise to everyone. I mean, we were really bold with it. Unlike a lot of musicals that open on the West End, we didn't have weeks of try outs. We, in fact, had only four previews and there we were with our bare faces hanging out and we opened to a standing ovation. Even Andrew Lloyd-Webber got up on his feet."

The lady's too modest. Lloyd-Webber wasn't the only one impressed. Long an under-rated, under-utilised talent in this country, Kirkpatrick even managed to score a starring role opposite Susannah York in a serious production of Shoehorn Sonata while in the UK. A long overdue career highlight to be sure, although Kirkpatrick insists that the real fun was to be had performing with UK crossover drag legend, Lily Savage in the high camp, tribute piss-take of Prisoner, the show which first made her a household name in Australia back in the '80s.

"It was heaven. He's so wicked, and clever and I kind of learned to be a straight feed to a comic in that show, because I never quite knew what he was going to do next. He's the master of ad lib. Off he would go on a tangent and I would just deal with that, never trying to compete with that sort of rare comedy, but perhaps just adding to it just by the look. Then he'd veer right back to a cue that was necessary, so I was quite happy to go along with that, and knowing I could get a laugh with just a look was quite gratifying. It was a lot of laughs on and off the stage. We were like a pair of naughty kids together. I had to come home and give my liver a rest."

Kirkpatrick was also quite happy to came back to the comparative casual anonymity she enjoys at home. A down to earth woman, she's not used to the adoring, maddish crowds of gasping fans that dogged her on tour around the UK

"I like to be able to leave the theatre and then go to whatever club or wherever and have a drink with my mates and not be pestered. Fortunately that doesn't matter in Australia because, as you well know, if ever I go to any places along Oxford Street it's just 'oh, that's her'. Which is fine because I am as known to the gay community for doing other things than Prisoner.

Indeed, this former seminal soapie star is still a well-known and much loved figure locally. But no one looks twice at this (in)famous woman when she hangs out on the Sydney gay ghetto scene. Unless, of course, they're her friends, and let's face it, Kirkpatrick has a lot of friends in this part of town. Over the years her close involvement with the Australian gay and lesbian community - be it a bartender at one of our venues, a tireless AIDS fundraiser celebrity guest or even just a partygoer - Kirkpatrick's earned them. But then she is that rarest of creatures, a highly principled, politicised idealist with a genuine, informed concern for everyone around her.

"It's the freedoms that we enjoy here in Australia which are the most important to me - freedoms that in these past few months I've seen slipping away, and they are in danger of slipping away if we don't do something about it. We don't really understand how little it takes to compromise that stuff. The racial and political and sexual freedoms that we enjoy, for which we are known throughout the world, are looking very tenuous to me at the moment and that saddens me. It's all very well for people to joke about Pauline Hewson, but right from the outset there is no joking there, oh no. I f ever I have seen a woman being used by the forces of evil it's her and it terrifies me."

These concerns aside, for now Kirkpatrick is focused on what must seem like a much brighter future. First off she has her one woman Mardi Gras career retrospective cabaret at the Tilbury Hotel in Sydney in February. Sure she's done plenty of musical theatre before. But this show will be different for Kirkpatrick - a very personal, camp, light-hearted send up of her life, jam-packed wit juicy gossip and ridiculous anecdotes, from her adventures playing an all-singing, all-dancing version of Prisoner's bull-dyke warden on the West End to the time she was passed over for the local bull-dyke in a local production of the musical, chicago because at the time she was better known for playing society matrons! And after that, there's her excitement at being cast in the role of Rod Taylor's wife in Stephan The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert Elliot's new film Big Red.

"The film is totally outrageous and irreverent and racist and sexist and ageist and all the things that I disapprove of," jokes Kirkpatrick. "Stephan Elliot is being totally naughty with this, much to the chagrin of the Americans who are so careful about political correctness and product placement. Stephan is being very bold. The film is a cross between Deliverance and Wake In Fright but wit ha lot of black comedy thrown in. It's really very silly and I think it's going to be a lot of fun."

Sounds great, but perhaps even more exciting to Kirkpatrick is the prospect that maybe one day she may actually be able to lay the character of The Freak to rest, once and for all. Although not before she returns to England for another run of the Prisoner musical.

"Well, to be honest, I'd really rather have put the whole thing to bed in 1986 when the show ended, but the powers that be don't let that happen. The just keep replaying it, and because I don't get any replay fees, or any residuals for those sales all over the world, I just think, well, this is my turn to make a quid out of it. So I'm perfectly happy to go and do the musical which is absolute shlock but great fun. I mean, who can knock an hour and a half on stage every night with people screaming with laughter? It's great fun."

Unfortunately, there are as yet no plans to stage the musical Down Under. Apparently there is some concern as to how Australian audiences would take to a theatrical lampooning of this so sacred of Antipodean cows. But even if the show never plays here, Kirkpatrick, who has had to rake over a lot of old memories and demons in recent months as she's prepared for her cabaret stage debut, insists she has no regrets.

"Actually, I'm seeing everything in a very light-hearted way these days. Things that, you know, 20 to 30 years ago or even 10 to 15 years ago I might have seen as painful, I'm now looking at with 56 year old eyes and I think 'oh, Christ did I really, how could I have been so fucking stupid?' and have a laugh about it. Which is quite wonderful, not to have any sort of bitter regrets about things, to be able to say what a silly bastard I was. But it's all kind of growing up, I suppose. Some of us are late developers, and it's taken me till now to realise that this is who I am. As an actor one is always terrified of what people think of one, but I think I've been growing towards this piece of mind for a long time. This is it. I don't have to pretend to be anything other than Maggie."

Campaign magazine - 1987