“It’s been a while since I shot Moody Christmas but I did direct this thing over in W.A. which was also set at Christmas, so I have been dealing with family Christmas dysfunction quite heavily for the last year,” he laughs. “It occurred to me when I started rehearsals that my character Trip in Other Desert Cities is attempting to keep the peace in his rather volatile family, there is certainly the correlation between him and Dan in Moody Christmas, even if one is probably filled with more angst and political drama than the other. At least this year at the real Christmas my family were all very good to me, they made a few gags but they were very good, they looked after me – my actual family dysfunction was at a record low this year, they were very kind.”
Ian grew up in a little coal mining town in Western Australia, a coal mining town, so acting wasn’t the job of choice where he came from. “My parents were always very supportive and I was basically just an attention seeker from when I was little. My mum would take me to plays, we would drive the hour up to Bunbury, so I was influenced by that,” he acknowledges.
After drama in high school he progressed from Curtin University to WAAPA and then out into the world of professional acting. “I think it’s been really good to build slowly,” he says of his career. “Some people have that thing where they get a BIG job straight after drama school or quite young, so as frustrating as it has been sometimes to get close to things and not get them, I have really enjoyed the ride and in retrospect it’s been useful to have a slow burn to this place where work is consistent. I am really lucky and happy too that I can do a bit of writing, so when one is not working so well the other can pick up a bit of slack and it’s not quite as stressful.”
Roles in Mao’s Last Dancer, The Pacific, Rush, Paper Giants and even a stint dating our Sally on Home & Away (resulting from this, the second Google search for his name is “Ian Meadow’s girlfriend” – quite the heart throb it seems – I did ask and he is single so don’t sweat it) have kept him in front of the camera, while also taking time to build up his stage chops.
“It is really nice to not have to conform to an idea of who you are or what job you do,” Ian says. “If you are doing what we do and it’s paying your rent and you are feeling like you are working on things you want to work on, then it’s an incredibly lucky position to be in.
“I happened to read this play before I was involved in it, to look at the craft and shape of it, to understand the structure of plays, rather than from a character perspective,” he continues. “The play is an archetype of American contemporary drama, it is a genre of play, the naturalist but politically charged family conflict where there is a young professional in the family who is trying to live up to the ideals of a parent. There is a particular quality to those sort of American plays, so reading it you think, ‘Well this is big stuff’. It is assertive Americans talking, clashing, throwing ideas around in a manner we don’t really do in Australia; it has that potential to be very epic if you can find the right balance then the drama in it can really spark.
“They are very big ideas and big personalities, so the joy and the challenge of it is to try and represent these people and emotions truthfully without underselling it or overplaying the whole thing. An epic family drama. A lot of the themes of the play involve the Iraq War and the Left Right divide of politics in the States, it is set in 2004, so I think now is a really interesting time to be touching back on the root of the places and political debates were are in today.”
The Broadway run of the show received gushing reviews, with critics crediting the subtle performances of the leads with imbuing the show with a fire power, Rachel Griffith’s as the shit stirring daughter, returning home having written a book that exposes her conservative Republican, Ragan-esque GOP family to some harsh and unwanted attention. It was said that the great Stockard Channing, in the role of wife and mother – in Australia played by Robyn Nevin – had found the part of her career. “It is testament to the writing that those plaudits come in for the actors,” Ian humbly deflects. “John Robin Baitz’s stuff feels like it sits in you, because he writes with such naturalism and the poetry that he does use is very cleverly worked. Our cast of Robyn Nevin, John Gaden, Sacha Horler and Sue Jones, they are some incredible actors who I have watched since before I had a career. It is amazing to watch these guys spark the work into action, and they are great words to be able to do that with. It’s politically explosive drama that has a biting wit behind its drive.”
BY JACK FRANKLIN
