David Wenham has seduced and terrified audiences across television and film, but this month he returns to the stage in one of theatre’s greatest roles. With one eye on politics and another on history, he revels in the 'faultless' writing of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
David Wenham does not consider himself to be a political person. Rather, he sees himself as "a person who has a great interest in politics. And not just domestic politics, but certainly international politics as well."
It may be this keen interest that in part draws Wenham to Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which the actor names as his second-favourite piece of theatre after Miller's classic Death of a Salesman. He is in town rehearsing the work for the Melbourne Theatre Company, in which he plays the pivotal role of John Proctor.
Written in 1953 at the height of McCarthyist paranoia in the US, Miller's play is set in the midst of the Salem witch-hunts of the 1690s, but is an allegory of the fevered political climate in which he wrote and in which he would be swept up.
After a group of young girls is caught dancing in the forest, one of them collapses, sparking fears of witchcraft in the god-fearing town of Salem. As accusations fly, paranoia takes hold of reason, with grave consequences for many of its citizens, including Proctor.
"It is the most spectacular piece of writing I think you will ever come across in the theatre," Wenham says. "It's a faultless piece of writing. And in terms of just the dramatic construction, it's perfection."
In 1956, Miller – already a prominent public figure due to the success of Death of a Salesman and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe – was called before the House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to identify writers he had allegedly met at communist writers' meetings some years earlier. He was convicted of contempt of Congress in 1957, but that was overturned on appeal the following year.
Even though The Crucible had been written four years earlier, it had still been intended as a kind of corrective to the hysteria he saw around him.
Writing in The Guardian in 2000, Miller referred to that time as "like any impotence, a psychologically painful experience".
"So in one sense The Crucible was an attempt to make life real again, palpable and structured," he wrote. "One hoped that a work of art might illuminate the tragic absurdities of an anterior work of art that was called reality, but was not."
Of course, fear and paranoia are never consigned to history. And in a bleak way, Wenham says, he sees parallels between the play and contemporary Australian politics, in which logic and reason have fallen by the wayside.
"I think for the last however-many years in Australia, that's certainly the status quo of politics, whether it be simplistic lines of 'big, new tax' or 'we're being invaded by refugees' or even 'the GST's going to go up'," he says, a nerve clearly exposed. "It's so simplistic, but it appeals to people's base fears and base paranoias. And if you fan that, it's so easy to achieve what you want to do. And I find it terribly frustrating watching that occur."
When he was younger, he might have considered a career in politics. But not now.
"I think I gain greater satisfaction out of what I do currently. Also I think I would find it a dreadfully frustrating process. I've got to be honest, I have huge admiration for people who do go into politics and I don't think we as a community respect those people highly enough. Because often they're put in invidious positions where you do have to compromise."
His partisan beliefs have also waned over the years, he says, (Wenham handed out how-to-vote cards for Labor's Maxine McKew in Bennelong at the 2007 federal election) and now he's not really sure where he would sit on the political spectrum.
Is that because he has become disenchanted? "I'm certainly disenchanted. Absolutely. I look at both sides of politics in this country at the moment and I shake my head in despair and dismay."
Playing John Proctor – the moral centre of the play – takes Wenham on a "monumental" journey every night.
"Ultimately, if I can be completely objective, I can't help but admire his choices that he makes through the play," Wenham says. "He's very hard on himself. He is by his own admission a flawed man, but who isn't? Who hasn't 'sinned'? Then for him basically to give his life so others potentially may have theirs is a pretty extraordinary thing to do."
When the season is finished, though, he would like to try his hand at something a little lighter. He has, of late, taken on a number of heavy and serious roles; most recently, he has starred in the critically acclaimed cable TV drama Top of the Lake and reprised his role of Dilios in cameo form for the next 300 film, Rise of an Empire.
"I feel over the past couple of years that the sort of work I have done has probably been weighted more towards the serious drama, which has been terrific, but I really feel as though, especially after I do The Crucible, I need to do something funny," Wenham says.
"Just for my sense of self as well, because I like to laugh and I like to make people laugh. In my earlier days I found it much harder after a show or walking off the set to actually leave the character in the dressing room or in the trailer. It was much harder back then. It's easier now, but even still there's a residual part of those characters that you play that go home with you to your house or your hotel or wherever you're staying."
It was, in fact, comedy, that staple of the theatrical child, that drew Wenham to a career in acting in the first place. Born in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville in 1965 into a large Catholic family – he has five older sisters and an older brother – Wenham delighted in entertaining with impersonations and comic storytelling from an early age.
The house and yard were small and money was tight – for a couple of years, young David slept in the dining room at the foot of the dinner table – but his parents were loving and supportive, and his childhood was a happy one.
Not that he was always easy to deal with.
"At school I was a real bugger, actually," he confesses, smiling. "I was very mischievous, and I spent a lot of time outside the classroom because the teachers couldn't stand to have me in there. I'd forever feel the compulsion to entertain the kids."
While his fellow students at Christian Brothers High School in Lewisham might have loved it, the teachers did not. By the age of 13, one of his teachers, a brother whom Wenham had "sent around the bend, essentially", called his parents to a meeting and suggested that while the boy was unmanageable at school, he did show a flair for performing that might be worth exploring.
By the next Saturday, Wenham was enrolled in drama classes.
From then on, every birthday and Christmas present came in the form of theatre tickets, including a subscription to Nimrod Theatre, the predecessor to the highly regarded Belvoir Theatre.
"That for me was a revelation, seeing what was occurring on that stage. That was magic, that was another world," he says. "And I thought, 'That's what I want to be involved in'."
He finished school and took a job selling insurance for NRMA before being offered a place studying drama at Theatre Nepean (now part of the University of Western Sydney).
To put himself through drama school Wenham had two part-time jobs: working at a sports store on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings, and calling the bingo at Marrickville Town Hall on Friday and Saturday nights.
Bingo nights were a big deal atthe time, attracting hundreds ofpeople each week. So calling the numbers was not to be trifled with. "If I called the wrong number or one that had already been called, woe betide," he says.
While he began his career in the theatre, Wenham's breakthrough role came with his sinister turn in 1998 film The Boys.
"That film actually opened up doors for me internationally with other film work, which I never would have anticipated. Similarly, SeaChange [the hugely popular TV series in which he played heartthrob Dan Della Bosca] did that here when I worked on that for the ABC."
Since then he has maintained an even sweep of film, TV and theatre work, here and overseas, becoming one of Australia's most recognisable and successful actors. Every now and then, he says, the stage still calls him back.
"I miss theatre when I'm not there, so every couple of years there's a creative bone in my body that gets a bit itchy and I have to scratch it."
The downside to it all is the travel, which demands that he be away from his Sydney home and his family: partner Kate Agnew and daughters Eliza Jane, 9, and Millie, 4.
He has also just finished working on his directorial debut – a film version of Tim Winton's short story collection The Turning. Wenham has joined other acting luminaries such as Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska in directing one of the 17 interconnected stories, which will debut at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival.
"I loved it. I loved it," he enthuses, adding that he would like to spend more time behind the camera. "I think for a long time I've been a frustrated director in an actor's body."
As an actor, he explains, you see everything from your character's perspective.
"Some time ago, I sort of moved away from that and I found myself constantly thinking of the whole, not just my own character."
For now, though, his focus is firmly on the stage, and the trials of John Proctor. Theatre is very different from acting in TV or film, he says, in no small part because "what happens on stage is completely reliant on the make-up of the audience that night".
While the audience might be oblivious to that, an actor is acutely aware of it. That is its challenge and its charm: each night, the character goes on a complete journey: "It's an opportunity to go for perfection, if ever you can."
When asked what it is he loves about acting in general, he immediately points out that it affords him the opportunity – travel notwithstanding – to be with his family.
But on a personal level, he's simply happiest when he's scratching that creative itch.
"Just the act of creating and performing basically fuels my fire. It gives me a reason for living, it actually stimulates my mind, it gets me thinking. It makes me feel alive."
From here.
