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The Heretic

May 2012

  • Robert Dunstan

Grappling with the fraught politics of climate change – and love

Melbourne Theatre Company will soon present the Australian premiere of British playwright and former stand up comic Richard Bean’s The Heretic, a black comedy from 2011 with the issue of climate change at its core.

Director Matt Scholten, however, warns that the work is not a polemic one and that environmental issues only form part of a play featuring a strong ensemble cast of Noni Hazelhurst alongside Anna Samson, Shaun Goss, Lyall Brooks, and Katy Warner as well as veteran actor Andrew McFarlane.

“The play has many different voices about climate change so it certainly doesn’t preach and the playwright hasn’t let any of them dominate too much,” Scholten explains. “So it’s a lovely experience for an audience to listen to all the different ideas and opinions the play brings up. Hopefully it will arouse them to think a bit more deeply about the issues and make up their own mind in terms of the planet and climate change. But the play doesn’t present one point of view and just push that because it raises lots of issues.

The Heretic is also about love,” he quickly adds. “It’s a play about a family and a mother and daughter relationship. It works on a lot of different levels so it’s fantastic in that way. It’s a complex story and there are lots of different entry points for the audience. It’s a terrific piece of theatre – I feel very positive about this production – and theatre, I think, is still the most powerful way of telling a story.”

The director was attracted to the theatre at a young age.

“I used to get to see lots of musical theatre as a child and there was always that feeling that it was something quite special to have people on stage right in front of you,” Scholten says with a laugh. “It was quite different to a movie where the actors seemed somehow removed. So I always imagined myself as being involved with theatre due to the immediacy and the live factor. That’s what attracted me.”

The razor-sharp, dark comedy, which picked up The London Evening Standard award last year for Best Play, will mark Scholten’s debut as a mainstage director having previously been involved in a host of independent productions. He’d attended VCA in 2006 at the age of 36 as a post graduate student but in 2008 began collaborating with Daniel Keene, an award-winning Australian playwright who has enjoyed success with such plays as All Souls, Silent Partner, Terminus and The Architect’s Walk.

“Daniel and I have worked together extensively since 2008 on a series of new works as well as revivals of his older work. It then registered with MTC that I was out there and around this time last year I was approached by the company’s associate director, Aidan Fennessy, about directing a play for their 2012 season. There were a few possibilities discussed but The Heretic seemed like it was the right one.”

Awardwinning actor Noni Hazlehurst will play the role of Dr Diane Cassell, a leading research scientist at a university in Yorkshire, while Andrew McFarlane will play her one-time lover Professor Maloney. 

“I’d met Noni in 2007 when she’d come to a production of The Crucible that I’d directed,” Scholten reveals. “She’d then expressed a desire to work with me and over a period of time we became good friends and then The Heretic came up which was a perfect fit. I feel extremely fortunate to have Noni in this production because while I not only value her friendship, it’s been a real joy to discover that we can also work together, which doesn’t always happen.

“And Andrew McFarlane brings such warmth and intelligence into the rehearsal room,” Scholten then enthuses. “He and Noni have worked together a lot over the years, either on stage or screen, so it’s lovely to have that friendship in the room as well. It’s what I always hope for with a play – a room of discovery, a room full of generosity, compassion and a lot of laughter.

“But I’m treating this the same way as every other play I’ve directed,” he concludes. “Once you get down to work with the actors it’s really the same experience, for me, as working on any play. I always go into any rehearsal room with an open mind because I very much like to listen and let the actors have as much space and time as possible to work.”

 

 

The Heretic plays at the MTC Theatre, Sumner from May 12 – June 23

mtc.com.au

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