By arts editor Helen Musa

Performing in both English and French, singers Milko Foucault-Larché and Corinne Andrew are returning to The Street Theatre with Paris After Dark, billed as evoking the atmosphere of “a true Parisian soirée”.

When I catch up by phone with Foucault-Larché at his base in Macquarie, he tells me they go where the work is.

“There’s not all that much demand for French cabaret in Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, so we travel a lot,” he says in understatement.

Mauritian-Australian, he made his stage debut in 1978 with a French theatre company touring Mauritius. He has been performing in Australia since the late 1980s and is best known for his Charles Aznavour tribute, Aznavour… From Today. He performed at the opening of the Rugby World Cup in Canberra in 2008 and won a MO Award for Best International Performer in 2009.

Foucault-Larche has made a speciality of taking his chic brand of Gallic musical theatre around regional Australia, usually with a core group of Melbourne musicians he has rehearsed beforehand.

“But we are very flexible,” he explains. In Canberra, they will perform with Joseph Macri, one of his two regular pianists. Macri is best known as musical director and conductor of the Southern Cross Orchestra. His other regular pianist is John Watson, who plays in Foucault-Larche’s Broadway show.

While Foucault-Larché comes from Francophone Mauritius, his associate artist Corinne Andrew comes from Paris, where she has performed at cabaret venues including the Folies Bergère and the Palais des Congrès.

He has 10 different productions under his aegis, although his first love is French music.

“When I first came to Australia, I found I was one of very few people who had the ability to do authentic French music,” he says.

But time has changed that somewhat. He  is aware that other performers are now working in the same space, notably French accordionist and singer Emma Hamilton, so he takes care to avoid performing in the same places at the same time.

In 2019, Piaf and Aznavour: Back in Time opened in Sydney, with Andrew as Édith Piaf and Foucault-Larché as Charles Aznavour.

Then, in 2021, working through the lockdowns and restrictions of the covid pandemic, he created the first French Music Festival, Francophonie 2021. Two new productions were developed for the festival, Paris After Dark and Piaf, Aznavour & Friends.

The Alliance Française, with branches around the country primarily devoted to teaching French, provides a natural audience for such productions. Wherever they perform, he says, they attract people interested in French culture.

There is also the North Shore-based French à la Carte, a French language and culture school.

Foucault-Larché emphasises that all their shows are specially designed for Australian audiences and are therefore bilingual.

“It would not work if we did it in French only,” he says pragmatically. “Our shows are performed in French and English. We find there is a good interest in French culture around regional New South Wales and beyond, and we always do a meet-and-greet at the end, with photo opportunities. It’s good for our brand.”

Not all the productions involve just two singers. For larger shows such as Based on Broadway & The West End, the company has a troupe of dancers based in Sydney who travel with them.

Operetta and opera were his first loves back in Mauritius, and the company is now adding the musical Notre-Dame de Paris to its repertoire. This is certainly not the Disney version, but the French-language musical by Richard Cocciante and Luc Plamondon.

And that will bring an entirely different slant to the Parisian world of Paris After Dark.

Milko Foucault-Larche and Corinne Andrew, Paris After Dark, The Street Theatre, October 18.

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