Cynthia & Gertie Ride Again!

Music, mayhem & madness

Starring Helen Moulder
Director/dramaturg - Jeff Kingsford-Brown

The magnificent Cynthia Fortitude, played by Helen Moulder, is definitely in the twilight of her long career as operatic diva. Tonight she has arrived to give a musical lecture for the inaugural meeting of the Island Bay Opera Guild (IBOG). Her longsuffering accompanist Miss Gertrude Rallentando, is nowhere to be found, so Cynthia must battle on without her.

"I wanted to honour the character of Gertie," Helen says. "My good friend, Rose Beauchamp, who played Gertie for thirty years with me in Hens' Teeth, The Legend Returns and Cynthia & Gertie Go Baroque, sadly died in 2022, and I wanted the delicious character of Gertie to live on somehow." Gertie does not appear in this show of course, but is very present in all sorts of ways!

"Helen Moulder's determined, dotty and totally delightful Cynthia... an unbeatable gem of a comic character." - Laurie Atkinson, Dominion-Post
"A most enduring clown, an irreverent and fanciful diva." - Thomas La Hood, Theatreview

Circa Theatre, Wellington
October 16 - Nov 2, 2024

Bookings:
https://www.circa.co.nz/package/cynthia-gertie-ride-again/

TOURING - OCTOBER 2025

ENQUIRIES: helen.moulder@gmail.com 0274 987 580

Venue: Any suitable theatre, community hall, performance venue, festival, retirement village.
Set up: 2 hours pack in + 45 minutes pack out
Personnel: 2
Duration: 75 mins
Price: $900 (or 70% of gross after reasonable costs, whichever is greater)
Appeal: Music, theatre and comedy audiences

BIOGRAPHIES

Helen Moulder

Helen has been working as an actor and singer for nearly 50 years. Her theatre highlights include A Toast to Melba, Wit, Doubt and Vita & Virginia (Circa), My Fair Lady and Suddenly Last Summer (Court), Hamlet and Vita - a Fantasy (La Boite, Brisbane), Phantom of the Opera (4 tours to Japan). She writes and performs her own shows, written with Australian Sue Rider - Meeting Karpovsky, (with Sir Jon Trimmer) Playing Miss Havisham, Gloria's Handbag and The Bicycle & the Butcher's Daughter. Helen's comic character, the fading opera singer - Cynthia Fortitude - and has created several shows -The Legend Returns and Cynthia & Gertie Go Baroque (with the late Rose Beachamp) as well as A Vote for Cynthia, Cynthia Fortitude's Farewell and Cynthia & Gertie Ride Again! Her film and television credits include Pictures, Close to Home, Country GP, Erebus - the aftermath, The Wall, Food for Thought, Sweet As and Growing Still.

Jeff Kingsford-Brown

Jeff Kingsford-Brown has been working as a theatre professional in New Zealand and overseas for over 30 years. A graduate of Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, he has performed and directed works at Court, BATS, Downstage, St James, Circa, The Depot and Fortune Theatres and was in the cast of the New Zealand tours of The Phantom of the Opera, The Rocky Horror Show, The Secret Garden and Nuncrackers. He has also performed in many NZ films and television. He was Artistic Director of Centrepoint Theatre from 2012 - 2016 where his most recent work as director was with Lord of the Flies. At Circa he has performed in many productions including several pantomimes, Meet the Churchills, Elling etc. Jeff has worked with Helen Moulder on her solo and two person plays, directing A Vote for Cynthia, Cynthia and Gertie go Baroque, Cynthia & Gertie Ride Again! and performing as the Tuba Player in Cynthia Fortitude's Farewell.

Audience Reviews

Nelson Performances - March 2023

Vibrant, clever, hilarious; wonky concept gone wild and wonderful; costume was awesome, very apt; loved the singing and audience participation.

Very very funny character; loved the language; a delightful exploration of getting an exotic opera off the ground; aimed right at the audience with their varying interests, knowledge and experience.

Very entertaining, covering lots of aspects of stage shows; good fun, a laugh a minute.

Marvellous fun; humorous, fun evening with great engagement and fun references; would totally recommend.

Loved the techno stuff, self-aggrandisement, audience participation, the interraction with lighting person.

Loved the choice of songs to sing along with, especially as I'm a non-singer; the inclusion of NZ characters and places; wasn't sure if I should sing or laugh.

Loved the collective singing; Cynthia singing, Cynthia getting confused; great mix of clever older woman, keeping up with modern inventions.

Good combination of humour, music and audience participation; nicely balanced, well thought out.

Circa Reading - November 2023

A very well timed show, delightfully chaotic at times, light-hearted and funny, very imaginative.

It was wonderful to see Cynthia again. Like an old friend I'd forgotten I liked so much. She is even more eloquent, and more abstruse - in a totally delightful way!

Quirky, charming, silly, delightful, delightfully profound, much needed fresh entertainment, enchanting, hilarious, heart warming, a beautiful tribute, fun, lighthearted, generous, big smiles from beginning to end, brilliant, relevant (protests, new technology, local issues, buses, scooters)

I loved you, physically; the work with audience members - you are a GENIUS at that!!; the surrealistic story; the audience singing.

Reviews from previous Cynthia Fortitude productions

THE LEGEND RETURNS

Rose Beauchamp and Helen Moulder in The Legend Returns

"This is a night out to cherish." - Evening Standard, Palmerston North

"Whether she is 'winging it' through a Rossini aria because she can't remember the words or being knocked out by a high 'C'...Miss Cynthia Fortitude is a riot." - Evening Post, Wellington

"Gertrude Rallentando plays with magnificent eloquence.... Though never saying a word, she conveys a vast world of frustration, deference and resentment through the microscopic inflections of her steely gaze." - San Francisco Chronicle

"You'll have to see it! Having spent an evening almost weeping with laughter, we don't care where they came from, or what they did before they came. That they came is sufficient!" - Metropolis, Christchurch

"One of our most requested recordings." - Radio New Zealand

"I would defy anyone not to be successively delighted, entranced and astonished by the wit, musicality and unadulterated madness these women bring to their craft, abetted by the sound and lighting of Ian Leslie. See it as and when you can." - National Business Review

"Just when theatre seems to be getting very serious, sober-sided and predictable, it is great to report again that nothing beats the sight and sound of an audience rocking and howling with laughter at the antics of performers who have set out to make a group of strangers one." - Dominion-Post, Wellington

A VOTE FOR CYNTHIA

"Helen Moulder returns triumphantly as her alter-ego to launch her political party. Of course it wouldn't be Cynthia without some opera excerpts, and a ukulele in accompaniment, in the guise of new clever anthems and campaign songs, all with hilarious lyrics." - Garth Wilshire, Capital Times

"If you have the recession blues, or are just feeling fed up with life in general, then Helen Moulder's blissfully dotty comedy should provide more than welcome relief." - Laurie Atkinson, Dominion-Post

"Cynthia, modelled on no particular diva but somehow incorporating a little of every diva I have ever seen, charmed us with her naïve sincerity while providing plenty of opportunity for cynical laughter at the machinations of today's election campaigns." - Kapiti News

CYNTHIA FORTITUDE'S FAREWELL

Jeff Kingsford-Brown, Helen Moulder and Michael Vinten in Cynthia Fortitude's Farewell

"She has created an unbeatable gem of a comic character." - Dominion Post

"Like her colleagues Anna Russell, Victor Borge, Barry Humphries and Joyce Grenville, Cynthia Fortitude (Helen Moulder) doesn't just perform, she takes her audience on a journey, she forms a real relationship with the public on numerous levels, sometimes surprisingly intimate and physical." - Opera News

"Cynthia Fortitude is New Zealand's most enduring clown, an irreverent and fanciful diva along the lines of Dame Edna Everage, but without the double chin or the camp. For twenty years Helen Moulder has occupied Cynthia's powdery, translucent skin, and the character has become a masterpiece, a National Treasure of Fred Dagg pedigree. "

"Spending an evening with Ms. Fortitude is a guaranteed pleasure, and in this production she really spreads her wings, bringing with her to the stage the Wellington Chamber Orchestra. These grand collaborators demonstrate Ms. Fortitude's considerable clout in New Zealand opera circles. No surprise then that she has been commissioned to write the official Opera for the Rugby World Cup 2011: Balls." - Theatreview

CYNTHIA & GERTIE GO BAROQUE

Helen Moulder and Rose Beauchamp in Cynthia & Gertie Go Baroque

"An enjoyable baroque flavoured musical revue - charmingly bonkers." - Manawatu Standard

"An evening of super-fun, super clever musical comedy. Congratulations to director Jeff Kingsford-Brown, and the whole creative team. Helen Moulder and Rose Beauchamp are absolute gems! I highly recommend you go see this show - 'tis funny, frolicking and fabulous!" - Theatreview

"Firstly, a note of thanks to Cynthia Fortitude and Gertie Rallentando - Thank you both, for your indefatigable energies and your irrepressible buoyancies! Together, you were as a matching pair of Courtenay Place street-lamps to our sensibilities throughout the intoxicating journey upon which you launched us, offering support as well as illumination! Your concerted efforts generated such refulgence, shining forth from within the textures of one of the masterpieces of English music, Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas"." - Middle C

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