Martin Crewes in Sweet Charity at the Canberra Theatre

The first, Charlie, is only briefly seen and is thoroughly bad; the second, Vittorio, is a self-obsessed movie star; and the third, Oscar, is a troubled soul, and possibly the one with whom Charity might have a chance at love.

In a big production, the characters might be played by different actors, but in a touring show it made both economic and dramatic sense to have one actor as all three. There's no quick change involved and it has a valid and useful subtext.

"She keeps encountering the same man," Crewes says.

"The heart of the story is that she's an eternal optimist: that's what's so heartbreaking."

Crewes says Oscar is the most fun to play.

"His character arc is the greatest and there's a lot of physical comedy and that sort of thing in it."

Oscar, he says, is "a complete dork", a contrast to Vittorio, "the king of cool". But it's the latter who has one of his favourite moments in the show.

"It's the point at which Vittorio arrives in Charity's life and they do the Frug ... it's one point in the show when everything quietens down a bit with the two of them in the scene. I really enjoy it."

The 1966 Broadway musical Sweet Charity was based on the 1957 Federico Fellini film Nights of Cabiria, about a Roman prostitute's search for love. The musical - with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon - changed the main character to a New York dancer-for-hire at a dance hall but the basic idea was retained. Among the additions was a song score including Big Spender, If They Could See Me Now and The Rhythm of Life.

Touring musicals aren't common in Canberra, but this production was modest enough in scale for it to be feasible.

"It was the inaugural production of the Hayes Theatre Company, which took over a tiny little space that was called the Darlinghurst Theatre, that's now the Hayes Theatre in Potts Point, Sydney. It blew everybody's socks off. It was one of those comings-together of a band of people who were just really compatible and had a singularity of vision."

Hunt-Ballard won a Helpmann Award as Best Actress in a Musical and Dean Bryant and Andrew Hallsworth won the Helpmanns for best direction and best choreography, respectively.

The cast will have to get used to working in bigger venues like the Canberra Theatre as they tour for three months, playing Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Wollongong.

Crewes, 47, was born in London and moved to Perth with his family when he was 10.

"I had wanted to be an actor since I was three," he says. He wasn't the only one in the family with such inclinations. His father was a television producer and both his siblings are also in show business.

"It's in our blood."

A couple of years after finishing high school he applied to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and got into the media performance course, but it wasn't quite what he wanted. Someone suggested he audition for an amateur musical production of Applause - "'Musical theatre'; I had never heard the term before. I had this image of a music box" - and applied for WAAPA's musical theatre course.

"On a Friday I was told, 'We need you on Monday' so I had two days to prepare my monologues and two songs."

But it was enough to get him in and after graduating he embarked on the typical actor's career, working various jobs such as bartender and forklift driver in between travelling to where the acting jobs were. Early roles included Mr Plod in Noddy Goes to Toyland and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

He worked as an usher at the long-running first Melbourne production of The Phantom of the Opera and remembers the talk of Victoria having "a Phantom-led recovery from recession".

"It was like, 'Musical theatre matters!"'

He went overseas on tours of Les Miserables playing Marius and South Pacific playing Lieutenant Cable. The latter, in 1995, was his first professional lead role and also introduced him to Peta Webb, with whom he was reunited15 years later and eventually married.

Among the highlights of his career was playing the lead role in The Man From Snowy River - Arena Spectacular. He learned to ride a horse as a boy but hadn't ridden much since. When he was asked about his riding abilities he says he answered, "I'm a fast learner and I'm not scared."

"That's the key thing," he says - being willing, and able to take on new challenges fearlessly. In this case, he undertook several weeks of intense training and it paid off.

"One of the things I've learned about all the jobs is you've got to learn so many different things."

For Barnum, he learned juggling, unicycling and acrobatics. And for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he discovered just how far he could push himself under pressure.

"I was cast as the alternate Pharaoh - they were going to do three shows on Saturday - and they got me in and said, 'We can't employ you for one show so you'll be the fourth male swing as well'."

There were three others, so they didn't teach him any specific roles to understudy and he just did offstage vocals and played the Pharoah once on Saturdays.

But then, he says, "The cast fell apart like I've never known."

Illness and mishap played havoc and he went from being the fourth male swing to the only male swing. He would arrive at the theatre each day to discover which part he would be playing at that performance.

"At the half-hour call everyone would troop in to the rehearsal room at Her Majesty's Theatre to run through the show for me."

He was terrified and running on adrenaline and thinking there was no way he could do well but somehow, he rose to the various challenges and was told he had saved the show.

And ever since, he says, "I don't get a lot of pre-show nerves."

During his career he spent more than a decade overseas, during which he appeared in the first movie in the Resident Evil series, performed in Britain with Judi Dench in the Royal Shakespeare Company musical The Merry Wives, and was scheduled to make a TV pilot of Scarlett in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005.

"There was a two-month hiatus and it was filmed [elsewhere] in Louisiana."

It wasn't picked up for a series.

But he's kept busy. For the past five years he's been working on a screenplay - "an espionage action thriller set in London" -to study the craft of screenwriting. And while he hasn't anything lined up in terms of work after the Sweet Charity tour ends, he's sure something will turn up.

"It always does."

He has that optimism in common with Sweet Charity's title character, but he's considerably more self-confident.

"The thing I felt I had that nobody else had was that I was willing to work harder … to go the extra mile."

Sweet Charity is on at the Canberra Theatre from February 11 to 21. Tickets $59-$99. Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.