If you have never seen Bernadette Robinson give yourself a treat and see her current one man show, Divas. It’s currently at the Opera House and it opens in Melbourne on 24 August. Bernadette Robinson is the woman who can sing like Judy Garland and she can sing like Julie Andrews. She can virtually sound like the two of them in duet together. With Bernadette the ability to mimic vocally is advanced to the point of being clairvoyant. She can inhabit another vocal persona and make it the vehicle for an art of self-expressiveness like no other. It all began with Songs for Nobodies which had a script (and a fine one) by Joanna Murray-Smith which gave us the discourse of the stars’ dressers and Bernadette Robinson was marvellously expressive in giving thematic power to the voices of the nobodies in Simon Phillips’ production. The words of the monologues blended superbly with the spectacular and starry showdowns but Bernadette Robinson’s sheer and sumptuous talent upstages whatever jewel box it is placed in however artful. Initially we had her doing everyone from Patsy Cline to Callas and her range of dynamised homages was extended in Pennsylvania Avenue where she played a lady who served the presidents while encompassing the vocal distinction of an added spectrum of great singers. In this new show Divas the script is derived from verbatim quotes from the musical stars, whether Dolly Parton or Amy Winehouse. With Bernadette Robinson the world of great voices is her empire and her dominion. The late great Barry Humphries was immediately struck by the uniqueness of her talent and when she took Songs for Nobodies to London both Helena Bonham-Carter and Emma Thompson were dazzled by her gift and achievement and she was nominated for an Olivier. Though few people would have known who she was in advance and she gained an audience because of the steady sussuration of talent. Bernadette Robinson needs a musical written for her in which her God-given and native talent is given a vehicle with a breadth to equal the virtuosic quality of a skill for which mimicry is too small a word. Imagine a musical with the literary quality of Gigi or My Fair Lady. Whether it used her vocalic range and her parodistic capacity to find the world inside herself it would be a crying shame if she were not to receive the fullest possible exposure.

Sigrid Thornton has been famous for the longest possible time which is highlighted by the fact that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is doing a concert version of The Man from Snowy River with Sigrid Thornton and her co-star Tom Burlinson in attendance from Thursday 17 to Saturday 19 August. There’s something uncanny about the idea of the score being conducted live while the film is shown so that two worlds of time collide by some principle of reanimation. Sigrid Thornton is a very dab hand in interviews no doubt because she’s been at the game for so long. She says that when you happen to be famous you have to remember that people may find something special about encountering you. And, she adds, if you don’t want to attract attention… well, don’t go to McDonalds at six oclock on a Friday night.

Star casting is something we use less in this country than we might. Sigrid Thornton was first seen on stage in Pinter’s Betrayal when it was directed in Melbourne by Kate Cherry. And of all our directors it is Kate Cherry who has been least afraid of the lustre of the obvious. She did a Sweet Bird of Youth with Guy Pearce as Chance, the Paul Newman part (to Wendy Hughes’ Alexandra del Largo) and some people will tell their grandchildren they saw Ben Mendelsohn play Tom in Cherry’s production of The Glass Menagerie. Just as no one ever forgets that they saw the young Mel Gibson as Biff in that Sydney Theatre Company production of Death of a Salesman with Warren Mitchell.

A footnote to Kevin Spacey’s acquittal is that he was seen having lunch with Trevor Nunn and there was apparently talk of him doing Timon of Athens that late bleak Shakespeare play about a naive magnanimous man who turns against his exploiters in a great shower of rage.

It’s striking to see that the Melbourne International Film Festival is screening a two-part documentary, Rebel with a Cause, about distinguished indigenous figures. So it’s a case of let us now praise famous elders of those who did beget us: Neville Bonner was the first indigenous member of parliament and a conservative, Pat O’Shane was a famous magistrate, Tiga Bayles presented Radio Redfern and Oodgeroo Noonuccal (orginally Kath Walker) was the first indigenous woman to publish poetry. Given the current debate about the Voice it’s interesting to be reminded of particular individuals with distinctive and distinguished achievements. Rebel with a Cause will clearly lead to plenty of debate and meditation from all quarters. And apropos of indigenous notables it’s no doubt true that Aborginal artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Rover Thomas outrank the footballers or even Cathy Freeman. C.L.R. James, the great West Indian cricket writer, argued that a Bradman could never equal a Gielgud (there was, after all, the script to be considered). Ancient childhood memory, however, recalls Polly Farmer’s first Melbourne match called by Jack Dyer, Captain Blood himself, that man of mighty malapropisms and mightier narrative powers. The rapt wonderment at this first appearance by the great Aboriginal footballer equalled the attention brought to Nureyev’s first performance in the West. Remember Sam Newman – always being criticised for his tasteless messing around with blackface – saying in his most heel-clickingly Geelong Grammarian, ‘It was my privilege to play with the greatest of all ruckmen, Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer.’ Then there’s Lowitja O’Donoghue, still with us at the grand old age of 91, who said twenty-odd years ago at the lunch with Paul Keating for the first Quarterly Essay, ‘I like to talk to the grandchildren because they’re getting fair-haired and blue-eyed by the day.’