Peter Rowsthorn is probably best known as Kim's put-upon husband Brett from the sitcom Kath & Kim.
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Now, in Chicago - the first professional production of the John Kander/Fred Ebb/Bob Fosse musical to come to Canberra - he's playing mechanic Amos Hart, who has it even worse.
Not only does Amos's wife, ambitious chorus girl Roxie (Lucy Maunder), cheat on him, she shoots her lover and importunes her naive, loving husband to help her while manipulating him at every turn.
Roxie is imprisoned awaiting trial for murder, as is the more successful vaudevillian Velma Kelly (Zoë Ventoura).
They become media sensations and vie for publicity and for the services of slick lawyer Billy Flynn (Anthony Warlow), who is renowned for getting his clients acquitted - if paid a hefty fee.
Chicago casts a cynical eye on show business, the legal system and the media, showing "the down and dirty world of 1920 Chicago", Rowsthorn says.
While Chicago's action takes place a century ago, "it still rings true", Rowsthorn says.
The show is in part about "instant gratification" and trying to gain more than 15 minutes of fame as public attention turns elsewhere. In a world dominated by the internet with its constant barrage of content demanding to be consumed, media manipulation, and the difficulties of sorting truth from fiction, Chicago hasn't dated.
As for hoodwinked husband Amos, Rowsthorn says, "It's not a big role in terms of playing time."
But Amos makes an impact as the only pure-hearted character in the show.
"Amos is true innocence ... He comes on, sings one big song, and exits the hero."
That song is Mr Cellophane, modelled on black vaudevillian Bert Williams's doleful number, Nobody.
All the numbers in Chicago evoke performers and acts from the past - there's a striptease, a tap dance, a ventriloquist act, and more - that help illuminate characters and tell the story.
"It's classic vaudeville," Rowsthorn says. But it's vaudeville with a contemporary twist.
"It was completely reinvented by Fosse and reinvented again in the '90s."
Then the 2000 film presented its own version. Rowsthorn says he won't be imitating John C. Reilly's screen characterisation of Amos. "That's a film performance, it doesn't sit in the live world."
While Amos doesn't have a good time in Chicago - he's exploited throughout - Rowsthorn has no complaints about his experience on tour.
"It's been a great year - I'm having a ball."
Chicago is based on reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins' 1926 play of the same name. Watkins was inspired by two Chicago murder trials she covered: both Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan attracted lots of media attention and both were acquitted.
Originally produced in 1975, the musical had a respectable run - more than 900 performances - but was overshadowed by the massive success of A Chorus Line which won nine Tony Awards and ran for 15 years.
But Chicago's time would come.
In 1996 the show was revived and that production - which won six Tony Awards - is still going. It's now the second-longest running show in Broadway history (after The Phantom of the Opera).
The 2002 movie adaptation was also a hit and its cynical vision remains all too relevant.
This is Rowsthorn's first time coming to Canberra in a musical but he's been here several times doing corporate events and stand-up comedy. He remembers the Private Bin as being one of the hardest venues in the country in which to try to make people laugh.
"It was a wild room full of young, drunk kids."
Rowsthorn, who lives in Western Australia, hasn't toured with a musical for quite some time. When his children were young he didn't want to be away from them and his wife for too long but kept busy with films and television, which didn't require the same commitment of time.
During his state's COVID isolation he played Bernadette in a Perth production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ("The best thing I've done ... it's a beautiful part").
He's also played both Riff Raff and Brad in The Rocky Horror Show and starred in comedies and dramas such as William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor and David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.
Rowsthorn was studying in Melbourne to become a teacher and performing comedy at night but never taught.
"Comedy is much easier than kids."
He went to a comedy club where a friend of his had been booked and thought, "If he can do it, I can do it."
Rowsthorn began as a mime - "I didn't speak on stage for a year and a half" - but eventually moved into spoken comedy.
Melbourne was a comedy hub in the 1980s, full of comedians and venues, and Rowsthorn was kept busy.
For two years he was part of The Comedy Company on TV - which spawned characters like Kylie Mole and Con the Fruiterer, and he also performed in the soap opera spoof Let the Blood Run Free in theatre and on television.
Rowsthorn recently completed a feature film, Frederickstown, playing a character far removed from the naive Amos Hart.
"I play a psychopathic killer - a very different role for me."
- Chicago the Musical is on at the Canberra Theatre from September 7 to 22. See: canberratheatrecentre.com.au.