The origins of The Beast date back to when Perfect lived in Healesville. He recalls a big, save-the-date dinner party between 20 people. “One couple bought a calf. It was slaughtered and then everyone went to the butchering. The only thing that went awry was, the guy who was doing the butchering turned up with a mobile coolroom trailer and when he was setting up, he tripped and fell on his own knife and slashed his hand open,” the multi-talented performer explains. “He had to be rushed to emergency to be stitched up, then he came back and did the butchering.
“We were laughing, thinking, what would we have done if we had to break down the cow ourselves? We’d booked babysitters, it had been in the diary and Yarra Valley is quite hard to get around if you’re going to be drinking copious amounts of wine,” reasons Perfect. “Would we have even gone ahead with it?”
This one eventful evening inspired Perfect to write his debut play, The Beast – a funny yet confronting affair in which three tree-changing couples hold a dinner party, only to be met with a similar conundrum. “I’ve always said that this play is about six arseholes who think they’re good, who eventually discover they’re arseholes,” he says. “Even though people can say that’s a terribly bleak outcome, nothing like that ever happens in life. I’ve never seen an arsehole realise they’re an arsehole.
“A lot of the play is about what it means to live an authentic life,” Perfect elaborates. “I’m always interested in the gap between the person that somebody is and the person that they would like to be. We all have that gap. We all live in that gap to some extent. But these characters very much have a view of themselves that is quite different to reality.”
Perfect plays with these contradictions throughout The Beast, examining the minutiae of a middle-class existence. “The way we are able to justify fallacies of logic in our head, or disconnects of reason from one source of data to another, I find those things really fascinating,” he says. “Being middle-class is one big social convention with a whole bunch of codes and rules that we’re supposed follow and a whole raft of things that we’re supposed to care about that, to a greater or lesser extent, we either do or don’t. And comedy can perform this really great service where you get to inject yourself into the fantasy or nightmare where people confront and break open those institutions or those ideologies that you feel so bound up with in your everyday life.”
It’s unsurprising, then, that Perfect and his fellow cast members have relished bringing the play’s characters to life. “A lot of people like to ask, ‘Is it hard playing these characters?’ There’s nothing more enjoyable for an actor than to play an arsehole,” he confesses, praising Rohan Nichol’s knack for nailing The Beast’s chief charismatic jerk, as well as Alison Bell, whose expert comic ability with “low-status characters” comes to the fore. “I mean, people behaving badly is where the gold is with acting. Doing horrible things is just immensely enjoyable and so, this cast in particular has taken to it, in a very funny way, like ducks to water. It’s terrific.”
Given the real life inspiration for The Beast, Perfect was eager to avoid any misunderstandings, making calls to those who were present that one momentous evening.
“When we did [the play] in Melbourne, the first time around, they all came to opening night and they had a really great time. Even though I was like, ‘There’s literally none of your personalities in it,’ they all saw themselves. But then, audiences generally do see elements of themselves in it.”
Mission accomplished, as far as Perfect is concerned. “It was written for and about the very audience that might go and actually see it,” he explains. “It’s interesting, too, in that it’s pretty unforgiving on a lot of levels. We hope people will recognise elements of their own behaviour or personality or choices in these incredibly amplified and heightened characters. The issue with that, sometimes, is that not everyone appreciates being shown a very ugly version of themselves.”
In fact, some of the reactions to The Beast have been beyond Perfect’s wildest expectations. “We’ve been doing it for four weeks up here in Sydney. It’s like adult pantomime,” he jokes. “I’ve never experienced that level of being people so invested in either loving or hating characters. Sydney audiences are pretty vocal but when you’ve got people literally yelling at the actors on stage, it’s just glorious.”
BY NICK MASON
