Voyage around a bully

Article appeared in CityNews edition July 22-28

By Helen Musa

DIRECTOR Ross McGregor has been in Perth for five years, where he and his wife, the actress Angela Punch McGregor, teach at the WA Academy of Performing Arts.

As well as teaching courses in screen acting and scriptwriting, he directs student plays and has recently staged "Cabaret," as well as heading a sought-after theatre course for Aboriginals.

As a former artistic director, McGregor is no stranger to Canberra Repertory, for whom he is presently directing John Mortimer's seminal play "A Voyage around My Father".

He finds himself working with designer Russell Brown for the twentieth time and says: "It's just like coming home."

The star cast includes old acquaintances and together they are attacking a formidable work.

To the public, playwright Mortimer is best known for "Rumpole of the Bailey", the long-running TV series starring Leo McKern and, sure enough, there are parallels. And, yes, the immortal phrase: "She who must be obeyed" is in the play.

In "Voyage", Mortimer depicts himself as a man and boy (played by Canberra trumpeter Zach Raffan and 11-year-old Pippin Carroll), craving love.

Centre stage is occupied by former ambassador to Indonesia and the US, John McCarthy, returning to the boards after having last performed in "Equus" for McGregor in 1976. McCarthy plays Mortimer's bad-tempered, Shakespeare-loving divorce lawyer. Rendered blind in a home accident, the father continued his career in the law for another 25 years without anyone ever daring to comment on his blindness, subjecting his wife, his son and his son's wives to his withering comments and humour.

"He loved his father very much," McGregor says, "but it is possible his father didn't love him." If that sounds appallingly negative, it's also "very funny, with no personal hatred, no mea culpa...I love the laughs in it... they come from some mad place in the psyche."

McGregor is quick to disassociate this play from other autobiographical plays and from trendy verbatim theatre, but in fact much of the dialogue is taken from the old man's real-life remarks. These days, he agrees, we would consider them a form of mental and psychological abuse.

So, Mortimer's dad was a nasty bully who interrupted people, spoke poetry aloud all the time, took his son to Shakespeare plays and spoke the words out loud even before the actors. What was there to love?

"This is for the audience to find out," McGregor says.

PHOTO: John McCarthy as John Mortimer's irascible blind father in "A Voyage around My Father".

"A Voyage Around My Father", Theatre 3, July 29 to August 14. Bookings to canberrarep.org.au or 62571950.