Back In The Spotlight

As published in the Sun Herald


It’s an interesting situation to interview an actor not long after who you’ve given them a ho-hum review. The review was for the Bell Shakespeare's Pericles. The actor was Marcus Graham.

Graham's eyes light up when he's introduced to me and he gives me a genuine smile as we sit on the balcony of the Sydney Theatre Company's headquarters, where he is rehearsing their latest production, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage.

But he is frank. “That weekend we opened [Pericles] there were some scathing reviews in Sydney. I’ve never been so beaten up in my life – but on the Monday after those reviews came out we sold $30,000 worth of tickets. Over 600 tickets in one day.

“Are people listening to reviewers?” he asks rhetorically.

“It put a wind back in my sails because you’ve got to get back up every night and do it.”

This tale gives some insight into a tenacious actor who has survived 20 years of working inf ilm, television and theatre and has only just returned to live in Sydney after coming out of a "very dark period".

He doesn’t elaborate on what the darkness was but it was enough to make him spend the last couple of years away from it all in the Blue Mountains, returning only six months ago to set up again in Kings Cross.

He has returned with a vengeance and seems be enjoying his new-found fame with interesting roles on both stage and screen that included appearing in Underbelly, the film Three Blind Mice and Pericles.

“I used to live in the Cross years ago and it’s very social and very interesting. And because I did Underbelly people come up to me and say: ‘I did time with the guy you played’. From a human standpoint, it’s great.”

His latest production re-unites him with director Gale Edwards in the newest hit from French playwright Reza, a play that has had different productions in Brisbane, Melbourne and now Sydney just in this year.

“It’s like the world’s favourite play at the moment … it’s such a wonderful representation of life as we know it … the ruthless nature of business, of humanity,” he explains.

Graham plays a corporate lawyer who works with a drug manufacturer that has put out a product that, while making millions of dollars for the company, is also making a lot of people sick.

He’s also the father of a boy who has had a fight with another young kid in the playground of the local school. The fight brings together two sets of parents from different socio-economic backgrounds to try to sort out the issue.

“It’s a lot about responsibility,” he explains. “Who’s to blame, who hit who and who will take responsibility.

"It then gets into semantics. Instead of he hit my son with a stick you say he hit my son, furnished with a stick. Because that’s what we’ve become [with] the fear of litigation. The protection we need to give ourselves because we might be f--ked over by someone else is paramount.”

The play becomes a comedy of errors as the two sets of parents (played by Graham, Sacha Horler, Russell Dystra and Helen Thomson) become more and more childish as the night wears on.

God of Carnage premiered in 2006 and has already had hit seasons on Broadway and the West End.

“It’s beautifully constructed and beautifully written – it’s such a joy to work on something that’s so wonderfully written,” he says. “There’s something really simple about theatre.

"You rehearse a show, put it on, people pay fifty bucks at the door - whatever – sit down, you tell them a story and that’s it.”

“There’s something really uncomplicated and honourable about that.”


God of Carnage opens on the 8 October and runs until 14 November at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Tickets: $30 - $85. Bookings 02 9250 1777 or sydneytheatre.com.au.