Award-winning Title Role Is How It Goes
The Age
Friday April 28, 2006
THE contrast could not be greater for Wayne Chapple. The director spent the first part of the year working on the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games before directing the latest show at Red Stitch, one of Melbourne's smallest venues.
"There's no doubt which is the most rewarding," he says, describing the three and a half months he spent on the MCG extravaganza as a chaotic grind as plans kept changing about the best way to display the ceremony's 4500 volunteers.He then started work immediately on the Red Stitch production of Neil LaBute's latest play, This Is How It Goes, which opens today."It is important that work like this is shown here," he says. "It's not being done anywhere else in the country, since this is the national premiere. It's very fortunate for Melbourne."The show opened in New York last year, with Ben Stiller in the title role. It tells what happens when a man (played by Brett Cousins) returns to his home town and moves in with a married, interracial couple (Chris Kirby and Susan Godfrey)."Most people who come to shows like this think they are pretty well-adjusted, politically correct individuals. But this play really questions this and makes people wonder if they are or not."He says that LaBute (who turned his earlier play, In the Company of Men, into a film that won the trophy at the Sundance Festival) claims that he is not interested in upsetting people."But he says that what is being addressed is worth getting upset over."The main issue in This Is How It Goes is prejudice, including racial prejudice demonstrated in the male characters, one of whom is black. Chapple says a lot of discussion in the rehearsal room is about the relevance of the play in Australia. "Anything I do has to have relevance, whether it deals with conscious or unconscious prejudices."This is the third show he has directed at Red Stitch since the company's inaugural year in 2002. The production reunites him with Cousins, who won the Green Room award for best actor in 2004's presentation of Joe Penhall's Some Voices, which later toured regional Victoria. The actor gives credit to the director for drawing the award-winning performance out of him. "When Wayne feels it's time to take it to the next level, he takes me with him," Cousins says, who is an original Red Stitch member. A recent holiday in London brought home to him the quality of the work the company chooses for its regular seasons."This character I'm playing now was performed by Ben Stiller on Broadway. To get these opportunities is a gift for everyone involved," he says.Cousins' Green Room award has so far failed to bring any changes to his career, a disappointment he attributes to the lack of activity in Melbourne's film and television industries."My goal is to be a well-respected Melbourne actor and the award is an important step towards that," he says.This Is How It Goes opens at 8pm tonight and runs until May 27, at the rear of 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda. Book on 9533 8083.
© 2006 The Age