The versatile performer dons Dusty Springfield’s beehive and “white soul” voice for an Adelaide season of the musical.

Amy Lehpamer spent much of 2016 playing the free-spirited, sweet-natured Maria in The Sound of Music. Two weeks after the national tour wound up in Perth, she started rehearsals for The Production Company in Melbourne, playing the altogether raunchier Dusty Springfield in Dusty: The Musical – a role she is about to revisit in Adelaide.

^{Amy Lehpamer as Dusty Springfield. Photo by Jeff Busby}

It’s quite a leap: from late 1930s Austria to London in the Swinging Sixties; from a traditional musical theatre style to a jukebox musical with a hit list of iconic pop songs; from Maria’s clear soprano to Dusty’s sensual, soul-infused mezzo.

It’s been that way for Lehpamer for quite a while now. With her career on a serious roll, she has clocked up a list of credits that show her considerable versatility. Since 2011, she has moved in quick succession from one very different role to the next: Kansas-born Sherrie hoping to make it big in Rock of Ages, supposed soap heiress Christine Colgate in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the...