Last season actress Lucy Peacock literally showed sell out crowds what balls she has when she played a beer swilling, foul mouthed, red-neck named Graham.
Swaggering about the stage, scatching her "privates", Peacock wowed the audience as one of many dynamic characters in Australian playwright Robert Hewett's suburban whodunnit The Blonde, The Brunette, and The Vengeful Redhead.
Peacock's known for more classical Shakespearean repertoire, and heavy dramatic roles, but audiences see a very different side of the veteran actress in Hewett’s quirky but poignant monodrama.
The Blonde, The Brunette, and The Vengeful Redhead centres on the impulsive actions of housewife Rhonda Russell (The Redhead) and the ripple effect they create on seven other lives including The Brunette, (next door neighbour Lynne) a troubled little boy (Matthew), a lesbian doctor (Alex), The Blonde, ( the Other Woman!) and audience favourite, husky- voiced hubby Graham.
The Blonde, The Brunette, and The Vengeful Redhead was such a hit last year that’s it back for a second Stratford season. Peacock first performed this piece for London, Ontario's Grand Theatre, ‘to get it up and formed.’ Then the Stratford Festival picked it up and the show played to capacity numbers at The Studio Theatre.
"The show sold out very early on in the season and I think people were expecting something a little different – I don’t know this. I don’t talk to everybody. But my impression is that they come in thinking – I think the title is a little well…. not deceiving in as much that I think they think it is going to be quite amusing like Three’s Company or something and it certainly is not anything like that – but what I love is that people are pleasantly surprised at how much more there is than that, so I’m thrilled."
This is obviously one hell of a vocal workout for you. Good idea to put a beer, a martini, and a cup of tea on the stage.
"Well, it has it challenges that way. It’s not too bad because of course when I get off stage to do the changes, I can grab a drink of water if I need it. Certainly those sorts of things help. The props are more for character definition and also the idea of director Geordie Johnson. His concept was that each character could leave something on the stage that would remind us of where we’re at, at any given time in the pieve. That's also particularly effetcive at the end – with the impact of the story in retrospect, so that we don’t forget where the characters come from."
My favorite character is Graham. How did you find Graham? Was this Geordie’s influence?
"Graham's a piece of work, eh? He just showed up one day. I don’t try to analyze Graham too much because he scares me a little bit but he just showed up. Weirdly enough, he was one of the easiest characters to pin. I have no idea why. I don’t examine that too closely but I grew up in a house full of seven kids – three of them boys. Maybe it’s that. I don’t know. I’ve always hung out with the boys.That’s just the kind of girl I am, so I have no idea where he came from but he is also really well written."
You also play a little boy named Matthew. Is he a special needs child?
"Matthew – No, he ‘s not a special needs child, he is a difficult child. But of course Ellen is the one, you don’t see Ellen - she’s the one that blind. That also has an impact on everybody’s lives. Matthew is just a troubled boy – as the old lady (another Peacock character) says, "It’s the in-vetro fertilization. You never what you are going to get."
"But needless to say, also when you see Matthew, his mother has just died and he doesn’t even know it. So that’s a very high stress situation for a little tiny boy who is a bit lost, and a bit lonely and very scared because he knows something’s up and he doesn’t know what it is."
