Margaret O’Hanlon - From New York Theatre to Queenstown’s Queen of the Stage
She’s been Queenstown’s queen of the stage for 30 years, bringing a little taste of her Broadway hometown of New York City to small town NZ. In that time, Margaret O’Hanlon’s directed, produced, written or performed in some 20 local shows and taught upwards of around 500 local singers, some now taking the world stage.
Growing up on the 20th floor of a New York City’ State Housing Project, one of six kids, outdoor play meant a walk with Mum to the park in what was a very dangerous neighbourhood. Even by her mid-20s, Margaret had no idea NZ existed. “I imagined it may be tucked away between India and Africa.” However, Australia grabbed her when she heard ‘Skippy’ the bush kangaroo’ (70’s TV series) lived there. “I’d always thought he lived in California because they were tanned and funny.”
Margaret long dreamed of performing on stage ever since, aged five, Ray Charles played on the Ed Sullivan show on their first black and white TV.
At high school she got her big break being accepted for the LaGuardia School of Performing Arts where she was saturated in all forms of music. Up against some exceptional talent she was determined to succeed, playing piano and singing. However, it was her acting talent they spotted and Margaret went on to the State University of New York’s Art College, completing a Bachelors of Arts and Liberal Arts, majoring in film and sociology. She and a friend performed in Greenwich Village where Bette Midler and Pat Benatar started out.
The view from Margaret’s tiny apartment window looked straight into a wall, but most of her time and money, outside of her secretarial job, went on Broadway Shows and concerts starring the likes of Blondie, Talking Heads and David Bowie.
“There wasn’t the big drinking culture at Uni that there is here,” she says. “You couldn’t afford to be drunk in New York or they’d rob or mug you.”
Margaret was soon on a plane to Europe to discover the real world. “That really changed my life as in the US we only heard heavily controlled American record labels. I was stunned at what was out there.”
An American DJ with a London friend scored a copy of Kiwi band Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’. “I heard it on the radio. It knocked my socks off. The DJ said it was a ‘British band’ and he’d had so many calls he was playing it again.”
Travel to Australia morphed into NZ after the travel agent said she was ‘making a big mistake’, despite having just $US700 for airfares and no work visas. Margaret planned to stay two weeks…until she discovered Queenstown was open on Tuesday nights. “I’d arrived in Auckland keen to hit the city and hear some music, but the guy said, ‘Sorry, they’re not open on Tuesday nights. You’ll have to wait until Friday.”
Hitching south, via the Coromandel, she was blown away by the beauty, also the sultry tones of now husband of 33 years, Nigel Hirst’s saxophone playing with his band, The Ratz, at Eichardt’s. “He was hippy weird, wandered around barefoot and grew his own veggies. I liked that.”
It was Christmas Eve 1990 and Margaret and Canadian friend Cindy were homesick for snow and Christmas carols. “All we got was Frisbee Golf, a lot of drinking and lakefront barbecues.” Prompted to sing in the restaurant that night, Dolphin Nightclub owner Jeff Turner emerged from the darkness, pulling out a wad of cash and handing penniless backpacker Margaret $200 to sing in his club on New Year’s Eve.
After working illegally as a word processor for the Department of Public Prosecutions in Melbourne and Asian travel, while her visa cleared, Margaret returned to Queenstown to marry Nigel. She spent her Auckland wedding night in hospital on a drip after malaria she’d battled in Malaysia reared its ugly head again.
Dexter and Violet completed their Queenstown family in the 1990s, when Margaret and Nigel teamed up with Mark Wilson and Mark O’Brien to form Masters Blasters. They still play in bands.
The act Margaret’s probably most renowned for is as director-producer of ‘Starry Eyed’ – a local sell-out take-off of British TV series, Stars In Your Eyes, started by Anton Ruddenklau in 1998. It lasted 10 years. Locals like Anita Haira (Whitney Houston), Charlotte Graf (Janis Joplin), Shaun Vining (David Bowie) and Tom Maxwell (Freddie Mercury) took local performance to a whole new level with talented costume creators Kay Turner and Janelle Aston transforming them into the real deal.
Songstars followed, attracting national recognition from the likes of Mike Chun. Margaret’s co-written and performed in everything from Kitchens to recent Tiny Room Concerts, appearing in numerous local musicals. Her other passion is teaching, the likes of rising young star Josh Mehrtens among her successes.
Fittingly, in 2020 she was awarded the NZer of the Year Local Hero Award in Dunedin, alongside leading surgeons and environmentalists. “I felt so humbled. That was amazingly cool.”
