SIMON PHILLIPS: Travelling Director Goes Platinum

Born and theatre-trained in New Zealand, the MTC's Artistic Director Simon Phillips is now a regular globe-trotter. Just back from opening Priscilla on Broadway, he spoke to Frank Hatherley over a Sydney breakfast prior to the day's rehearsal for the Melbourne production of Love Never Dies.


1.

He’s the hottest theatre director of the year. In February he opened his production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert on Broadway. In May he’ll unveil a brand-new version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies in Melbourne. Meanwhile he’s continuing his final year as Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, for whom he’ll direct Hamlet in July and The Importance of Being Earnest in November. Phew.

Simon Phillips starts his day in inner-Sydney Surry Hills with breakfast at fashionable Bill’s Restaurant. Actually, its official name is bills – lower case, no apostrophe, no ‘restaurant’. That’s how trendy it is.

Tall, dressed in all-over black – black t-shirt, black shirt, tight black jeans and shiny jet-black briefcase — he is relaxed and friendly. Recently turned 53, he could well pass for a decade younger.

He orders two soft-boiled eggs, hardly breakfast for a workaholic renowned for his 16-hour days. “I’m used to a fairly intensive schedule,” he says with cheerful understatement.

Why is he rehearsing the Phantom sequel in Sydney?

“Because the wardrobe is being made here,” he says. “The actors are having so many fittings, if the wardrobe was here and we were rehearsing in Melbourne it would have been an absolute nightmare. So there’s a little bit of up and down to Melbourne going on for me.”

His frequent flying points this year alone must be extraordinary. “Yes, I’ve definitely gone platinum,” he says. And so has his international directing reputation.

It’s his 12th and final year leading the MTC and he continues to keep his restless eye on things. “I flew down last Saturday to go through Hamlet with my set designer Shaun Gurton, and to watch a run of Next To Normal [the small-scale Broadway musical which opens at the end of April]. I gave it to Dean Bryant and Matt Frank to direct and musically direct. I’ve been working with them as assistants or associates for a long time and I felt it was time they stepped up to the mark. Now it’s important that I make sure they are supported.”


2.

His elegantly presented boiled eggs arrive, accompanied by an arty stack of ultra-thin toast shapes. While he eats he talks about his recent New York experience. He’s an enchanting talker.

“Everyone who works on Broadway really, really believes that they have reached the pinnacle of their performing career. You don’t have to incite anyone to do their best work, because they’d made it to Broadway and they need to prove that they deserve to be there.

“One of the things I like about Australia and the Antipodes [Phillips is New Zealand born] — we don’t take ourselves too seriously. There’s an efficiency about work here but it’s not cutthroat. On Broadway everyone is absolutely rigorously serious, from the performers to everyone who works backstage. They know their place, they know their function and they know they have to perform.

“For a country that calls Obama socialist whenever he tries to introduce anything for the greater good, it’s amazing how unionised everything is. They may be socialist-paranoid but they’re far more stridently unionised than we are here.

“You get some absolutely crazy union fellers. Everyone has a very specific job. The bus in Priscilla was loaded with secret people at any given time, because you can’t say ‘you go on with that costume and that prop and hand it to that actor’. No, there has to be a prop and a costume person.

“We had a guy working backstage who had five cues in the show. His fifth cue involved him walking up two flights of stairs to do something on the fly floor. But he said ‘oh, no, I can’t do that, I don’t climb stairs’ – and that was taken to the union. We argued it was crazy and we won, but the issue would never have even come up in Australia.”

Do you get huge respect as the director, or are people watching you very closely?

“You get both those things. What your needs are will be paramount at any given time and everything else will be sublimated to that.

“But the producing world is intense. Part of the ethos of being a producer there is that you get to give notes to the director. You get to say ‘I think the show would be better if – ‘. So you’re fielding that quite a lot. I understand why they’re watching you like a hawk. They’re anxious. They raised 15 million dollars and they’re want their money back.”

“Some notes were genuinely very helpful, but some could be conflicting. One producer says ‘this is my favourite moment in the show’, and the other says ‘I hate this moment beyond world: you must cut it’. From two very powerful people. How do you juggle that? My response was that we should see what the audience think of it, we should road test it.

“As soon as the audience came to the show they were so overwhelmingly positive a lot of those problems just faded away.”

American audiences always seem so enthusiastic, so inclined to give multiple standing ovations.

He shrugs. “Priscilla always gets a standing ovation, every territory we’ve been to. But I know what you mean: you’d go to something quite underwhelming in New York and at the end there’d always be people who get to their feet. It’s charming in its way. It’s genuinely people going to the theatre with a will to be thrilled and wanting to be very generous in their congratulations.”

He orders more butter for the skinny toast.


3.

Simon Phillips opened Priscilla in London’s West End in March 2009 [it’s still running] under the co-production wing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group (RUG).

“I didn’t meet Andrew at that time, but I had enormous respect for André Ptaszynski, his CEO. I thought he was an extraordinarily savvy and congenial guy, really as good as they get. So they knew about me at RUG.

“Initially they had a madcap plan to open Love Never Dies in several territories at once, but they soon saw how impractical that was. Where’s the director? Literally phoning it in. So it became the usual ‘we’ll do the blueprint here which can be done around the world’.”

The London opening in March 2010 was not the success that might have been expected. Reviews were, as they say, ‘mixed’. Most critics loved the sweeping score (“Andrew Lloyd Webber at his musical best,” said The Times), but others were unhappy about the storyline (“torpid,” said Variety, “a radical rewrite is required”). The proposed Broadway production was ‘indefinitely postponed’.

Plans were changed. RUG’s Australia/Asia division was offered the chance to develop a new version. Tim McFarlane, the local Managing Director, rang through to the newly-resigned Artistic Director of the MTC and offered him the gig.

“So I was brought on board,” says Phillips. “Then I went to meet Andrew and we developed a series of changes. He then decided to introduce those changes to the London run.”

The show closed for a week in November when a new director — not Phillips — oversaw the rewrites.

“I don’t know if Andrew would have asked me, but I was completely unavailable. I wouldn’t have felt particularly happy to do it in London because it wouldn’t have been on my own set, and I didn’t want to get involved in the clearly awkward politics between Andrew and his original creative team.

“So they road tested those changes in London, and when I went back to see how they’d gone, in general I thought they were really good. Structurally, it was definitely an improvement.”

So are you now moving ahead of those changes?

“Yes, we’re making adjustments mainly in terms of how we plan our physical production, how it flows and develops. And I’m clarifying the new narrative. There are some places in London where, because they were constrained by the original design, there are some clunky moments, in my view. But our design [by Sydney-based designer Gabriela Tylesova] was entirely conceived around the new structure.

Is Ben Elton, now resident in Australia, still involved?

“No, none of the original team have been working on it. When they started doing the changes in London, Charles Hart, who was the original co-lyricist on Phantom of the Opera, came in to help on some re-lyricing. I’ve asked Charles to do a few more lyric changes for me where I thought the new plot could be clarified with a little bit of tweaking.”

Will die-hard Phantom fans take to the sequel?

“The way Phantom ends is fortuitously enigmatic. The sequel has the central premise that Christine and the Phantom did actually sleep together, at least for one night. Some die-hard fans find that untenable and if they don’t buy it there’s nothing I can do about that. For me, from the chemistry of the original stage version, it is certainly possible.

“And there’s a different vibe. All the characters are now ten years older and that takes away the frenzy and the tremor of youth. The dilemmas of the characters are different. They are essentially maternal now, rather than fraught with burgeoning sexuality.

“In spite of the fact that many people say that Phantom of the Opera is their favourite opera, Love Never Dies is far more an opera that Phantom ever was. Its flow, its musical energy and its tragic ending are far more operatic in tone.”


4.

Preparing for a high-profile Hamlet while directing Priscilla and then Love Never Dies must have been challenging. “Madness,” he laughs, “spin time. What was I thinking of?”

There are unavoidable expectations for his Hamlet following his radical, Helpmann Award winning Richard III last year. And he feels the pressure. For the first time he goes silent, then chooses his words carefully.

“Well, [long pause] I’m nervous of the idea that Richard was such a hit so what’s Hamlet going to be like? But also I feel – [pause] Richard responded to our totalitarian concept. But part of the genius of Hamlet is its untameability. To push it into some kind of mould would be to the detriment of what is the most extraordinary thing about it. I’d say it’s got very strong ideas but it hasn’t got a concept — [long pause] Who knows? We’ll see. It’s a contemporary production.”

Can you do ghosts and battlements in modern dress?

“I want to create a scenario where you say to the audience: really, really, really, what would it be like if you got visited by the spirit of your dead father? Rather than saying, let’s try and work out a way that the ghost is all in Hamlet’s mind, which is counter to the play, of course. The play has other people encountering the ghost before Hamlet does. I don’t want to allow the audience to distance themselves from that phenomenon.”

To cap his amazing year he’ll be directing The Importance of Being Earnest, a play he staged at the MTC in 1988 when he was the company’s young Assistant Director. His fabulous cast then included Ruth Cracknell, Gordon Chater and Frank Thring, with Geoffrey Rush and Jane Menelaus among the young lovers. So why do it again?

“Well, I was finding it very difficult to work out what I might do as a swan song. And then Geoffrey and Jane and Bob Hornery had a kind of a drunken night and came to me and said, ‘look, why don’t we do this? wouldn’t this be fun?’ [Rush was volunteering to play Lady Bracknell!]. It’s the greatest comedy ever written, and I was also doing the greatest tragedy, so I thought, well, there you are, two little treats. It did seem as good a bow as any to put round my time with the company.”

His two-egg, no-coffee breakfast over, he’s ready for another full day at the office. Will he be keeping up the frantic pace in 2012?

“Well, I do have a couple of things lined up, some other things have been mooted, and I have the ongoing ‘where will Priscilla go next?’ hanging over me. Its next port of call is Brazil, which seems to me gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want to put Priscilla on in Brazil? Maybe I’ll do what all those other ‘original director’ show-offs do and pop in for the last two weeks of rehearsal.”

No doubt he will rack up many more frequent flyer points.

(www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/simon-phillips-our-travelling-director-goes-platinum)



AMY LEPAMER

— Frank Hatherley interviews the rising star of the Australian production of Rock of Ages.


Amy Lehpamer’s road to musical theatre stardom can only be described as ‘unique’. How many Catholic girl school educated, classical violin playing, university degreed, WAAPA rejected, self-taught singer/dancers do you know?

Here she is – about to start rehearsals for Rock of Ages, playing Sherrie, the rock-chick, power-ballad lead, a role lusted after by most of Australia’s young, highly-trained actresses.

Full of energy, she’s come from a photo shoot with her co-star Justin Burford. She’s currently an ash blonde. Her amber eyes sparkle. Wearing the world’s shortest mini-skirt and, I presume, an 80s-inspired puffy-shouldered silver top, she says she’s raring to go.

“I was cast back in July but I couldn’t tell anyone. Now I’m so excited to be able to sink my teeth into it.” She has a formidable display of teeth when she smiles, which she does often, and I reckon she’s going to take a mighty bite at this huge opportunity.

Amy Lehpamer (pronounced le-parma) is 25. “We’re not sure where the name comes from,” she says. “My family is Croatian, but it might be from some other remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I’m constantly clarifying it but, hey, it’s my name!”

What’s her big song in the show?

“Harden My Heart, by a band called Quarterflash. It’s a really big ballad with all the 80s tropes — the smoke machine and the wind machine all blowing at once as Sherrie sings through her pain. It’s very heart-on-your-sleeve.”

She has an impressive speaking voice, deep and direct. How would she describe her singing voice?

“Oh, it’s a ‘belt voice’ all right, but it goes mezzo-soprano as well and I can get definitely quite low. It’s a pretty big range. I’ve been working on that – I’ve been exploring opera sounds as well as the rock sounds, to give my voice more balance.”

Working on her talents is what Amy has done all her life.

“I decided I wanted to play the violin at age 6. I still to this day have no idea what the inclination was, but I decided ‘violin’, my parents said ‘sure’. I played it very seriously right through my teens, and I got pretty good at it.

“I admit I was a huge showman. I was that 13 year old, moving around.” She swishes her hair from side to side as she mimes bowing her instrument. “I was not a student of Mozart. I was going for Kreisler and the big, fast passages.”

When she arrived at Geelong’s Sacred Heart College (school motto: Virtus vera nobilitas, or ‘Virtue is true nobility’) a rival interest began.

“I auditioned for the school musical, and I was hooked. Every year I did the musical. The school ran a tight ship with those productions, I’ll tell you what. They were definitely a training ground. My first lead was Kim MacAfee [the Ann-Margaret role] in Bye Bye Birdie, and I did Anita in West Side Story, which is a role I will never be cast in again. I had black hair at the time and I took it VERY seriously.”

I suspect Amy does most things VERY seriously.

“I even did Fiddler On The Roof with my violin, sitting on the roof with a full moustache and everything. That was in Year 12, so I was 17. It was a very busy year. My poor mother drove me everywhere. I went to violin lessons, I was in the school musical, I was in the local amateur musical [Godspell for Doorstep Productions].”

So imagine her disappointment when she was turned down for WAAPA, the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, prime target for musical theatre wannabees. She tried again after her gap year as a music teacher’s assistant at a boarding school in England. And she was rejected a second time.

“I was quite heartbroken, devastated. I was very passionate about that WAAPA course. I had great friends that were going there, from Geelong, getting straight in. I always thought to have a career you needed to train. Now I had no ‘in’.”

Instead, she went to Melbourne University, studying English Literature and Japanese. Oh, yes, this is some bright lady.

“I started doing university productions. The first was Jesus Christ Superstar. I played Judas! We had a very clever director who was studying her masters in religious philosophy. My Judas was an androgynous anarchist punk with a mohawk. I had the best time singing it. Having that bass line completely won me over. It was the foundation of me going ‘okay, rock is where I sit’. I ended up winning the 2005 Victorian Music Theatre Guild award for best female performance, which was an interesting presentation.

“At that same time I was studying violin quite seriously at the Con. But it became a wobbly relationship and I ended up putting my violin away and focussing more on university.”

At the end of her second year a friend suggested she audition for a summer job with Tokyo Disney in Japan.

“There’s two parks, Tokyo DisneySea and Toyko Disneyland, and they do auditions twice a year for dancers to play characters like Cinderella. They were starting a new show called Big Band Beat, a live jazz review. I thought, well, I’m studying Japanese, so this would be like a paid exchange. I got the job and off I went, singing Chattanooga Choo Choo and In the Mood quite a few times a day in a lavish production with Mickey Mouse playing the drums and tap-dancing.”

Not like WAAPA then?

“Definitely not like WAAPA. But perhaps I learned more. I was thrown into this cast of predominantly American music theatre grads, who had all trained at Boston College or AMDA [New York] or wherever. They were all very professional and I got my musical theatre education there. I met Josh Piterman over there. He was recently in Australia as Tony in West Side Story. He said ‘do you have an agent?’ and I said [little voice] ‘no’, so he gave me the number for his.

“I came home, I had two semesters to go, and by the time I had finished my last semester I had been booked for Follies with the Production Company and for Shane Warne: the Musical [in which she understudied Simone].

“I’m a total student of my craft. I love acting and performance, I love talking to people about it, and I’m very passionate about it, and that passion certainly got me over the line.”

Now firmly on the other side of ‘the line’, Amy played the lead in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for the Production Company in 2009, and created something of a storm in The Threepenny Opera for the Malthouse Theatre in 2010. As a super-sluttish Sukey Tawdry, she was described by one critic as “unironically pornulicious”.

“I don’t even know what that means,” she laughs, “but I think I need it on a tee-shirt.”

Does she worry what the staff at the Sacred Heart College might say about her latest exploits? After all, Sherrie in Rock of Ages is a stripper.

“In Shane Warne we all wore fluorescent underwear while holding a giant inflatable penis. In female casting you’re either the nun or the whore. I guess I have a big personality and I’m no shrinking violet, so off I go to the whore side of things, if necessary.”

Does she ever think of returning to her first love, the violin?

“Maybe one day I’ll get to fuse it all. Maybe I’ll do a Japanese cabaret playing violin with a bit of Croatian mixed in the background and me singing ‘Virtus vera nobilitas’.”

She’s laughing heartily at the thought. But I wouldn’t put it past her.

(www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/amy-lehpamer)



SEND FOR THE DOCTOR

— Anthony Warlow talked and sang to Frank Hatherley during rehearsals for Doctor Zhivago.


There’s no doubting his excitement. The uncrowned ‘King of Australian Musicals’ is glowing with enthusiasm for his latest venture.

“It’s time for a serious musical that challenges people,” declares Anthony Warlow. “I was longing for a new musical with great lyrics and beautiful tunes that audiences come out and start going...“ And he launches into a soaring ‘la-la-de-dah’ version of a love ballad from Doctor Zhivago, his latest star vehicle. Others in the greenroom turn to watch.

“When people came out of Phantom they were going... ‘la-la-la-la-dee-dah’...” This time I definitely recognise ‘All I Ask of You,’ and so do the smiling onlookers. “That was a big part of the experience.

“We’ve just released two songs that Lucy Maunder [his co-star] and I recorded. We played them on the radio for the first time this morning and already we’ve had people saying ‘Oh, I can’t get that tune out of my head.’ Yes, that’s what we want!”

The musical gets what is described as the ‘world premiere’ at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in February, followed by an ‘exclusive’ eight-week run, then opens at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne in April. The ‘exclusive’ run is because other musicals are booked into Sydney’s Lyric later in the year.

But, make no mistake, Doctor Zhivago is the real deal. It’s an “epic show” with “lavish sets”, a major international director (Canadian Des McAnuff) with award-winning form (Jersey Boys, Titanic, etc.), and a determined producer (John Frost) with large pockets, a track record (Priscilla, Wicked, Fame, etc.) and focussed Broadway aspirations.

The prime creative contributor however is New York songwriter Lucy Simon, who wrote the score for The Secret Garden, a Broadway hit in 1991, and a notable vehicle for Anthony Warlow in its 1995 Australian tour. It was that performance that ensured Warlow would get the Doctor Zhivago lead 15 years later.

Warlow explains. “Lucy said to me once, ‘you know, I’ve witnessed my Secret Garden many times over the years and I’ve always thought that you were the only person who really embodied the spirit of the role’. I was very flattered by that.”

Now 49, Anthony Warlow looks fit for the new challenge. His early-90s fight with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a blood cancer, is far behind him. In smart black shirt and trousers, his proudly bald dome today showing a dusting of fair hair round the ears, he accompanies his comments with expressive gestures from surprisingly delicate hands.

“Yurii Zhivago is a tough role,” he says, “but it’s also incredibly poetic. He’s the bollard, the observer around which all the other characters buzz. My challenge is to have the audience come and observe with me, understand why I do what I do.

“He’s the lover, the poet, the little boy. He sees beauty in everything. And there’s a great strength in him.

“He constantly challenges the moral perception of what he’s doing. It’s a time of gigantic civil upheaval and many wars, but the core element is the love story. Yurii does leave his wife and have an affair with Lara, but in the Russian ethic he’s seen as a hero because he’s following his destiny.”

Has he been able to add his personal stamp to this new work? “We have collaborated beautifully,” he says. “It’s about the amalgamation of all the different styles that I can achieve vocally to paint a really interesting palate for this character.

“In New York I said to Lucy, I can do these certain things: I have my falsetto, I have what I call my — I don’t like to use the word — but my ‘pop idolly sound’, and I have my baritone. Perhaps when I sing in the falsetto areas that is his poetic soul.

“I remember there was one moment in Yurii’s soliloquy that just sounded like we needed a disco mirror ball, because it went – [disco beat] da-da-da da-da-da dah. I said to Lucy and Eric Stern [the Music Superviser in charge of arrangements], why don’t I create the percussiveness with my voice and you give me a classical sweeping bed? You give me — [violins] diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle — and I will do the percussive lyrics — da-da-da da-da-da dah. Lucy said, that’s great. So we updated it and made it my own.”

When Warlow returned to his great early triumph, The Phantom of the Opera, for a two-year tour commencing in 2007, he had to cut the matinees from his schedule. “It’s all about the vocal turnaround,” he had said at the time. “It’s just fatigue.” So how is he approaching the 8 shows a week being advertised for Doctor Zhivago?

“I give a lot of soul to my roles,” he says strongly, “and they take it out of me. Phantom was a different challenge last time round because I was older. He was a darker beast, a sexier beast. Zhivago is a different character. He’s not tormented in that gothic-like manner.

“This has been written for me, for my musical abilities. I said ‘let’s pace this, let’s do it in keys that work for me’. Obviously I’m going to have my ‘money notes’ which people like, but I’ll be doing things which are in my range, and that’s important for me. I will definitely be able to do this 8 times a week.”

Anthony Warlow is used to big challenges. Perhaps the biggest one he has ever faced was in his early days as a performer in Community Theatre in the New South Wales town of Wollongong. See our article on Anthony Warlow's early amateur days.

WHEN IS A 'WORLD PREMIERE' NOT A WORLD PREMIERE?

The Doctor Zhivago logo is clear enough — Lara’s blue eyes, the show’s title and the strap line ‘A NEW MUSICAL’. Publicity from The Gordon Frost Organisation insists on the show’s newness, as does just about every article you can read on the subject.

In early publicity, Anthony Warlow is quoted as saying — “I haven't been this excited about a show in a long time. It's all the more special because it’s been written for me.”

The NSW Government – via its Events and Tourism NSW committee — approved sponsorship of the production, proudly declaring that “the premiere of Doctor Zhivago introduces the world to a new musical in the grand tradition.” NSW Tourism Minister, Jodi McKay, said Sydney would be hosting “the very first stage adaptation of the world's eighth-highest grossing film”.

But is it ‘NEW’? Is this really, as producer John Frost says in The Australian (15 Feb), “a world premiere of a brand new show”?

In this internet age of ours it’s impossible to suppress all mention of a professional outing for a show such as this, especially in the States. So it’s simple to discover, via Google, that a musical called Zhivago, written and directed by the same music/lyrics/book/director team as here, was staged at La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, in May 2006.

So-so reviews can be read online, as can a July 2010 item from the Los Angeles Times that huffily wonders why this new Australian version is being sold as a ‘world premiere’.

In a 16 Feb Sydney Morning Herald profile of director Des McAnuff, reporter Bryce Hallett writes that “in his final season as artistic director [of the La Jolla Playhouse] in 2006-07, McAnuff... premiered the composer Lucy Simon’s Doctor Zhivago which has continued to evolve in leaps and bounds...”

Clearly, much work has indeed been done on Doctor Zhivago beside the title change. The script, the set, the orchestrations have been thoroughly reworked. Whole scenes have been added. Maybe it is truly a NEW show.

And maybe it’s not a problem anyway. Broadway shows almost invariably get tryout runs in the regions. Several previous La Jolla shows have made it to the Great White Way — including Tommy, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Jersey Boys — and no doubt their New York openings were trumpeted as ‘WORLD PREMIERES’.

Anthony Warlow himself told this reporter that the original San Diego production had been rushed against a deadline in order to retain the rights to the famous novel. “Now we can get it right,” he said.

POSTSCRIPT.

The arrival of Doctor Zhivago’s official program (cost: $20!) puts an end to all discussion on the ‘world premiere’ question. The title page clearly labels it the ‘Australian Premiere’, and states ‘the musical Zhivago was originally produced by La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, California’. And overpage, the current (for the next few weeks, anyway) premier of New South Wales writes that she is proud ‘my Government… has secured the Australian premiere season of Doctor Zhivago for Sydney’.

How does this square with all the statements and advance publicity from producer, Government and everyone involved? That’s showbiz, I guess.

(www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/send-doctor)



EWEN LESLIE: OUR NEXT BIG THING

— Frank Hatherley chats with Australia’s hottest actor.


I’m waiting at the Wharf Theatre to meet next year’s Prince Hamlet. It’s the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf and Ewen Leslie will be the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Hamlet.

Ewen Leslie is Australian acting’s Next Big Thing.

Virtually unknown before his first professional stage job in 2007, his fast-track rise to award-winning prominence has been remarkable. He’s won the Best Male Actor Helpmann Award in two successive years and The Australian has proclaimed “the ascension of a remarkable actor”.

Today he’s between a matinee and an evening performance of The Trial, a breathless, whirling adaptation of Kafka’s novel. He plays the constantly onstage bank clerk struggling to understand the legal nightmare into which he has awoken on his 30th birthday.

Leslie, also 30, never pauses in the pell-mell production, but now he arrives for our meeting relaxed and friendly, fringe flopping, brown eyes alert. He reminds me of a young Jeremy Irons.

His theatre career is on a roll. After The Trial plays Melbourne and Perth later this year, his 2011 begins with The Wild Duck, directed by Simon Stone for Sydney’s Belvoir B Company. Then comes Hamlet in August, directed by Simon Phillips, for whom he amazed as Richard III earlier this year, winning his second Best Actor Helpmann.

“It was about five days into the Richard season,” Leslie remembers, “when Simon said ‘I really would like to do Hamlet with you next year, are you interested?’”

He certainly was. The 2011 MTC brochure promises ‘a fresh, contemporary interpretation’. So would this Hamlet try to match the modern-day ‘West Wing’ approach to Richard III?

“I don’t think it will be as concept-driven as Richard was,” says Leslie, “with its shades of the Bush administration. Not that I was playing George Bush with a limp, but we highlighted the spin, the using of the press to get yourself ahead.

“Simon did say that he was interested in what sort of a ‘car crash’ we could create for Hamlet. You know, all the things that have happened before the play starts – then a series of incredibly bad decisions all spiralling out of control until you’ve got a stage littered with dead bodies.”

Before that comes the Ibsen; well, sort of Ibsen. The Belvoir 2011 brochure states that this WildDuckis written by director Simon Stone ‘after Henrik Ibsen’.

“We’re actually doing workshops for the production this week,” says Leslie. “Simon did a play called The Only Child based on Ibsen’s play Little Eyolf. He took the characters and the scenario and then created a new thing out of it. I loved it.

“This week we’ve been talking about the things that we find really interesting in the Ibsen and looking at the kind of theatre we could create out if it. The Ibsen has a cast of 13, but we’re doing it with 6 characters. It’s a scary thing which requires a leap of faith.”

Ewen Leslie comes from Freemantle, Western Australia. He was acting in school plays when he was ten. “My mum knew I had an interest in acting, and she saw an ad in the paper saying that a company was making a television show called Ship to Shore. She sent a photo which got me an audition. There was something like 800 kids up for parts and I made it into the final ten.

“I did that show for two years from when I was 12 to 14. Actually, I don’t think I was all that good. So I didn’t fall in love with acting at that time. I loved the technical side of things – how it was shot and put together.

“But I got a theatre scholarship to my high school, the John Curtin College of the Arts. Sam Worthington [now in Hollywood with Avatar, Clash of the Titans, etc] was in Year 12 when I was in Year 8.”

Ewen planned to go to NIDA after his final year but missed the auditions.

“Then I found out about WAAPA [the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts]. People said ‘they don’t take people straight out of school’, but ‘do it for the practice and next year you’ll be more confident’. Actually, those comments really helped me relax at my audition.

“I got a call back for the acting course, didn’t get in, but was on the reserve list. Then someone went to NIDA instead, so I took their place. It was good to be so close to home. I had home-cooked meals. I think if I’d moved to Sydney at that age it would have been a very different story.”

He’s certain that WAAPA has key advantages over NIDA, despite its geographical remoteness from the theatre centres of Sydney and Melbourne.

“The great thing is that you’re given the opportunity to make mistakes without being in the industry’s eye, whereas at NIDA the agents and directors come and see you in shows at any time. There are things that I did at WAAPA that I’m really glad went under the radar. I remember reading an interview with Hugh Jackman where he said that was why he chose to go there.”

WAAPA actors do showcases in the east after graduating.“I got my agent via a Sydney showcase. And, as I had quite a few friends in Sydney, I thought, well, I’ll stay.”

But it would be three years before his career picked up. “It’s a really hard industry,” he says. “You need to stick in there. I was auditioning a lot and not getting any parts.

“I was working behind the bar at the Old Fitzroy Hotel and I fell in with a couple of friends of mine who were writers. We started doing shows downstairs. I would be pulling beers, and on my days off I’d be doing the shows. It was a really wonderful thing to do because the only way you get better at acting is by doing it. Doing co-op shows is the first thing I would suggest to anyone graduating.”

His first paid stage-acting job came in early 2007, in Paul by Howard Brenton at the Belvoir, directed by Wesley Enoch. “It was only a small part [he played Jesus!] but it led to a co-lead in The Promise by Alexei Arbuzov at the Belvoir later in the year. And to yet another audition for the STC.”

He didn’t hold out much hope. “Honestly, I had been for so many auditions at the STC. I’m not bitter about it at all because in many way I was still finding my way in an audition room – so I never expected that the first job I would get there would be with one of my favourite actors.”

Oscar-winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman had come to town to direct Riflemind by Andrew Upton, the STC’s co-Artistic Director. “I was over the moon. In the cast were Hugo Weaving and Martin Csokas. The great thing was I didn’t have a very big part, so I could sit back and watch. I learned a lot just watching those actors.”

Momentum had taken hold. “Who is that?” said Cate Blanchett the first time she saw Leslie on stage.

When a contracted actor dropped out of the Actors Company, Leslie was right on-hand to audition. In 2008 he did The Serpent’s Teeth and Gallipoli, before meeting his destiny as Price Hal in War of the Roses, directed by Benedict Andrews. It was the role that won him his first Helpmann Award, as Best Supporting Actor.

“I’m very lucky,” he says. “There are so many good actors out there. It keeps you humble to remember that ‘right-place right-time’ plays a huge part in it.

“Though I do back myself in what I do,” he adds.

Leslie’s partner for the past eight years has been film producer Nicole O’Donohue, whose first major movie Griff, the Invisible successfully played the Toronto Film Festival and is to get an American release.

“Her producing work has been a huge eye-opener for me,” says Leslie proudly. “I couldn’t do it in a million years.By the time Griff comes out it will be five or six years of her life dedicated to truly working on one thing. I’m incredibly proud of her.“

Does he want to get off the theatre bandwagon and taste the international film success of the favoured few young Australian actors?

“The thing with theatre is that you have to say ‘yes’ to something a year in advance without knowing that someone’s going to say — and it has happened! — ‘I’m really interested in you for this or that film’.

“Because of doing all that TV filming as a kid, I really love the process of film and it’s something I’d really love to concentrate on. After Hamlet, of course.”

(www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/ewen-leslie-our-next-big-thing)