The Beast, about to premiere at the Melbourne Theatre Company as part of the Melbourne Festival, is a thoroughly nasty play about a group of well-meaning young people doing the proverbial ‘tree -change’ in order to live sustainably, which is all very fine until they have to slaughter their own dinner. Remember the South Park show about the ‘smug’ over hybrid car drivers in San Francisco? That sort of thing. Perfect spent some time living in the Yarra Valley where he came up with the idea for The Beast after enjoying a heartily carnivorous dinner with friends. Perfect maintains he’s not questioning anyone’s good motives with this satire, rather he’s taking an icepick to the self-congratulatory attitude possessed by some people with low carbon footprints. “This work does not set out to mock the good intentions of globally aware people,” Perfect insists. “But rather to take a firm swipe at anyone that uses a cause as a banner to advertise their innate goodness.”
Ok folks, it’s official – this is how you get roles in hilarious black-as-pitch comedies written by Eddie Perfect: know someone involved. Actor Hamish Michael was asked by director Ian Sinclair to come on board to play Simon in The Beast, “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Michael says. “He directed my girlfriend Kate (Mulvaney, also in the show as Marge) in The Seed at Belvoir and he sent us an email one day saying he’d like us to be involved.” Fellow actor Sheridan Harbridge was given the thumbs up for the role of neurotic Gen by friend and cast member Virginia Gay who plays Sue. “My character’s definitely damaged goods,” Harbridge says, “ Any minute she’s going to break. But she’s making the best face of it she possibly can; she’s surviving.” Michael says he’s enjoying inhabiting the part of arrogant Simon who he describes as ‘dripping with self-importance’. “Everyone knows guys like that. He’s a teflon-coated alpha male jerk. He doesn’t see how much of a jerk he is, he thinks he’s a great guy. I normally play nervous powerless roles,” he adds with a laugh.
How do the female characters come across? “Everyone has their moments of ugliness,” Harbridge explains. “The women are trying to deal with damaged men when they’re quite damaged themselves. They do some pretty awful things for their men, I think! It’s a show about three men in extreme circumstances. They’ve survived a shipwreck.” Both actors say The Beast is ‘very funny.’ “Eddie’s thing is absurd comedy,” continues Harbridge. “The ink leaks out of everyone; there are some ugly bits.” The darkness of the piece clearly appeals to the two members. “Even when you’ve got unlikeable people doing unlikeable things, you still relish them,” Michael notes. “They’re hipstery kind of late 20s types who use buzzwords like ‘ethical’, ‘sustainable’, ‘authentic’ and who spend all this money to reduce their carbon footprint.“ “We’re playing quite terrible people,” agrees Harbridge. “Leading the audience towards dark characters who are trying to do good things. They’re living horribly but eating ethically.”
The Beast may well have a freshness of its own by opening night – when Beat spoke to Harbridge and Michael the text was still in a state of ‘fluidity’. How is that for the actors? “It’s terrifying,” they both say. “We’re feeling like we’re not rehearsing; we’re changing and developing it all the time,” Sheridan adds. This, it must be said, isn’t unusual with a new work. “When you’re staging a classic you can get in and start rehearsing from day one,” says Michael. “We’re having to step in and out of our characters, step outside the play in order to look at it objectively. I’ve got a lot of lines to learn; I drive a lot of things in the play. With most plays over the last couple of years I’ve had a crisis between weeks three and four which makes me want to give up acting altogether. It’s terrifying but you just cope.”
The cast is working closely with Perfect and Sinclair to haul The Beast to its feet in time for its MTC season. “It’s a very new endeavour for him,” Michael says. “It’s his first instance of not writing for himself.” “It’s his first straight play, as in his first non-musical non-singing theatrical drama,” Harbridge adds. “We’ve asked him to put a song in it!”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
