With Michael Cathcart alongside Joanna Murray-Smith (writer of Three Little Words) and Peter Houghton (plays Curtis in Three Little Words):
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[chorus to 'Go Your Own Way' by Fleetwood Mac plays]
Michael: Fleetwood Mac setting the scene for our first story. It's about a couple who have been together for 20 years, and yeah, they decide to go their own ways. Tess and Curtis are apparently happily married, but they're breaking up. And their separation affects not only them but their very best friends, a lesbian couple called Annie and Bonnie. That's the set up for Three Little Words, it's a very funny, savage, entertaining show by one of Australia's most popular playwrights Joanna Murray-Smith, which I saw over the weekend at the Melbourne Theatre Company. Jo, welcome.
Joanna: Thank you, Michael.
Michael: Congratulations, a big night, the audience went off at the end!
Joanna: They were a very nice audience on opening night.
Michael: In a gratifying way.
Joanna: Thank the good Lord. It wasn't just my family cheering!
Michael: Also with us, are Catherine McClements.
Catherine: Good morning.
Michael: Who plays the woman who unbelievably is throwing in her marriage! [Catherine laughs] And Peter Houghton is the man who can't quite believe it's happening to him!
Peter: Good morning.
Michael: So the show opens with these two, who are sitting alongside us, asking their best friends to dinner, their lesbian mates Annie and Bonnie. Just tell us what happens, Jo.
Joanna: Well, in the course of this very convivial, happy, relaxed dinner, which is like so many dinners that these two couples have shared together over a very long period of time, Tess and Curtis reveal that they have decided to split. And it's not really because they don't love each other, they do love each other. It's not because they're not happily married, they have been very happily married. But Tess has decided that she has a yearning to know who she is without him. She says she's now been with him longer than she has been on her own. And has she, the individual Tess, become subsumed by the couple. And so it's kind of a big experiment which is utterly horrific to their closest friends, it's daunting to Curtis, her husband, but he's going along with it. But to their friends it's a real betrayal because the life that they have composed together, the world that they have composed together, is fundamentally composed of two couples. Not four individuals.
Michael: They feel she's walking out on all of them.
Joanna: Yes, exactly.
Michael: So Catherine McClements, you play Tess. Why... why leave? Why do you think she would leave? I mean you could go backpacking in the Andes or something!
Catherine: [laughs] I think that it's part of the problem of finding the love of your life early in life, and I've had friends who have been with their partners since they've been 18. And it's... how you discover yourself as a human being, often happens so much in those 20s and 30s, but if you're with the same person you were then, it's how do you grow with those eyes on you. And that shared history.
Michael: For the play to be believable, you've gotta believe that she would walk out on a man she says she loves.
Catherine: When we talk about walk out... it's an arrangement that they're trying to experiment with.
Michael: Well she's leaving!
Catherine: She's leaving, but, so is he leaving her. It's so that they can explore what life is like when they're alone! [laughs]
Michael: No, no, no! [laughs]
Peter: I was going to butt in there!
[Catherine laughs]
Michael: No, no, no! He's not leaving her!
Peter: Yeah. [laughs]
Michael: Peter, at the dinner, you are a real... I mean, you are pissweak at the dinner. Because you just say well Tess feels this, Tess feels that. You just feel like a man who's been brought up under the tyranny of having to let women have her say, and suddenly later on in the play, you think actually, I do have -
Peter: Yeah, I have a deep voice and I'm gonna use it.
[Catherine and Joanna laugh]
Michael: And I have feelings!
Peter: Yeah. She sort of says I'm leaving you, but then says, could you leave?
[Catherine laughs]
Michael: [laughs] Could you move out of the family house?
Peter: 'Cause I'd rather stay here, yeah. So it's kind of revolutionary actually, she stays in the same place and the other guy has to go and have a revolution.
Catherine: But it's also about the difficulty, the idea that you wanna leave, but the difficulty of leaving those things behind and actually what does hold you there. And how hard it is to let go.
Peter: Yeah. It's a bit like a documentary on all marriages, I think, where you get to middle age and you start thinking, is this it? You know. Actually I hope my wife's not listening, it could be a disastrous beginning to an afternoon! [Joanna laughs] But yeah, it's this yearning that comes up for Tess, and everyone sort of feels it, a wanderlust you get once you have children. But you don't usually act on it because it's too radical a notion. In plays you do!
Michael: If your wife's not listening Peter, her best friend has just texted her!
[Catherine laughs]
Peter: Yeah, that's right!
Michael: This is not a private conversation!
Peter: Oh really? It feels like one! [laughs] So yeah, he tries to go along with it and he tries to be a snag about it and everything, but in his heart he knows it doesn't really fit. But being the nice bloke that he is, he goes, I get it, I get it, okay. I'll support you.
Michael: The nice bloke? No, the weak bloke!
Peter: Oh, Michael, Michael...
Michael: The weak bloke!
Peter: It's 2017!
Michael: [laughs] Now, I was reflecting Jo, while we were watching the play last night that so often the audience feels moved to asked about your plays. How much is this about you? I don't know why that would be the case, because we don't often ask that about playwrights. But I'm sitting there thinking, gee, I mean I know you, I know your husband. Here you are talking about a marriage. Why does it feel so close to the bone, do you think?
Joanna: It's interesting, I mean, it gets back to that question about, is it or is it not the job of the artist to imagine themselves into worlds that they do not necessarily participate in. I mean, look, Ray and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last week so it could not be more ironic timing to have a play about the kind of dissolution of a long term relationship. But, it is in no way autobiographical in plot terms, however, of course everything in all of my plays is autobiographical in terms of it being territory that I've chartered mentally and in terms of my imagination. And I think that, possibly because Ray and I did meet very young, we had some ups and downs before we got married. But we feel in love very young. We have grown up in each others shadow, really. And I think that there have been times in my working life where I've had the opportunity to travel a lot on my own. And so I get these little blasts of aloneness through this long period of marriage, in which I get to play with the notion of who I am when I'm separate. And I think when I was younger I found those times a bit intimidating, now they feel very liberating. I miss him and I miss the family, but I kind of exult in the experience of being alone within a limited period. And so I think those thoughts about freedom and who I am when I'm out in the world solo are not so distant from me. And I have kind of extrapolated from that in this play. And the other thing is all of my plays are really about long term relationships and the deals that couples do with one another to allow each other self dilutions and to allow each other to get away with things. Because you know that if you let them get away with something, they will let you get away with something. And it's a silent invisible contract that I think is there in all long term relationships. And in a way it's what allows them to survive.
Michael: Joanna Murray-Smith is my guest this morning here on Books and Arts. We're talking about her play which has just premiered in Melbourne, it's called Three Little Words. Well, Catherine McClements and Peter Houghton, let's have a scene. What are you going to do?
Peter: Well... [laughs]
Catherine: Ah, this is a scene after the dinner party. It's the first time they meet again in the play, after they... um...
Michael: They've made the announcement.
Catherine: They've made the announcement.
Peter: Hm. So it's the first time he comes back to the house, I think really, isn't it? He's come back.
Catherine: But he's been off...
Peter: Yeah. Who knows what he's been doing!
Catherine: He's... something quite amazing has happened to him. [Peter laughs] And not so amazing happened to her! [She and Peter laugh]
Peter: Things have changed!
Catherine: So, we'll read this...
**
[Catherine as Tess] Kiss me.
[Peter as Curtis] Tess...
[Tess] Just because we're splitting, it doesn't mean that affectionate gestures should go, don't you think?
[Curtis] It's... I don't know. I'm ambivalent.
[Tess] Ambivalent?
[Curtis] It's a bit of a mixed message.
[Tess] You won't kiss me?
[Curtis] Not right now. I'm not a yo-yo.
[Tess] Okay, okay. (pauses) I was asked out on a date. He wanted to do tapas.
[Curtis] Is that a code word?
[Tess] I just think full disclosure is the only way... I know it's painful, but for all our faults we've always been honest with each other.
[Curtis] Full disclosure?
[Tess] An acquaintance set us up.
[Curtis] What acquaintance?
[Tess] Oh, it doesn't matter. She just wouldn't take no for an answer. Saddle up, she said.
[Curtis] Saddle up?
[Tess] Obviously I have not the least interest. I told her, I said, I am not ready to saddle up.
[Curtis] That's Bonnie's phrase. Bonnie says saddle up.
[Tess] It wasn't Bonnie. Okay, it was Bonnie. I told her I had no interest, but you know what she's like.
[Curtis] A stable hand?
[Tess] He was in I.T. Boring. Of course I said no. But that's not what this is about.
[Curtis] I can't believe it was Bonnie.
[Tess] Leave Bonnie out of it. The point is, he'd never heard of Tony Blair.
[Curtis] So you did meet with him?
[Tess] He just called me and... before I said no.
[Curtis] He called to ask you out, and you talked about Tony Blair?
[Tess] Oh I don't know, it just came up. And he said, he's that TV chef, right? (imitates a buzzer) (pauses) I miss you.
[Curtis] That's good.
[Tess] Oh babe, I know this is hard, but you'll get used to it.
[Curtis] Alright.
[Tess] And I really do think that this will be good for us.
[Curtis] Okay.
[Tess] And no one is saying that, you know...
[Curtis] No?
[Tess] Well this is something that I have to do right now...
[Curtis] I get that.
[Tess] But no one is saying that it has to be forever.
[Curtis] (scoffs) You wreak havoc, and now you say the havoc is temporary?
[Tess] I get that you're angry, Curtis...
**
Michael: Hmmm!
[Peter and Catherine laugh]
Catherine: You wait until the end of the scene though, it's not as bad as it sounds!
[They all laugh]
Michael: It's a weird job, isn't it? As I'm sitting here watching the two of you, pretending that you're breaking up, and you're tearing up a little bit there Peter.
Peter: Oh!
Michael: It's a weird job you guys do!
Peter: It's very weird. Yeah. I mean, it's funny this play because it's... yeah. And that's the beautiful thing about acting, you get to act out all these catharsis that you don't really act out in your own life. So I actually look forward to it. People often say, doing drama like that must be so taxing, you must be exhausted. But in some ways it's more liberating than doing a comedy, which is what I usually do, a flat out comedy. Because flat out comedy is so technical, all you're thinking about is timing and numbers and when I turn my head and that sort of thing. But this is quite a liberation, just to jump into a scene and play it for what it's worth.
Michael: And go deeper.
Peter: And go deeper, yeah.
Michael: So, do you think at this stage, he wants her to come back?
Peter: Um I think... well, I don't want to reveal too much about the plot. [Catherine laughs] He doesn't know what he wants, totally.
Michael: Right.
Peter: But he has made other decisions involving other people in his bedroom. So...
Michael: Oh that's tantalising!
Peter: Is that too broad?
[Catherine laughs]
Michael: That's tantalising! Um, so this reaction of the two friends, Jo, is the other driver of the play. And what's paradoxical about the two friends, the two lesbian friends, is that they, on the one hand are just appalled that this is happening. And yet each gets involved in one of these people's future and sort of helps them find, try to hook up with somebody else. So they have a kind of contradictory driver themselves.
Joanna: They do. I think what Tess and Curtis feel by the end is that they're overly invested in their life. That their friends have been overly invested, and perhaps they're overly invested in each others lives. And I think that idea came from my own experience when friends around us were breaking up. And I felt this, although feeling very secure in my marriage, most of the time, I felt really incredibly threatened by other people breaking up. And this sort of worrying sense of why was marriage, why was a seemingly happy marriage, not satisfactory enough for them? What do they want that I don't want, or we don't want. Or do they just have higher standards of happiness? Are Ray and I just happier with less, is that what allows us to stay together? And I think that notion of witnesses to our emotional journey and how those witnesses respond, to other people's intimate rollercoasters was a big part of my desire to write the play. But the other thing was to try and grapple with those themes of behaviour in terms of men and women and relationships, but to do it in a way where the audience doesn't take a side in terms of gender politics. They felt their loyalties will shift around the play, so at times they were judging a character and the next minute they were feeling pity for them, or sympathy for them. And that kind of happens, I think, with all four characters. That the audience is never quite sure who had right on their side.
Michael: No, you'd never know. There are villains all over the place and people of virtue. At one stage Tess, I think the final line of the first half of the show, she says, what is loyalty, it's the lie that we tell ourselves to justify our fear.
Peter: Ooh! It's a scary concept, isn't it?
Michael: That's one of the possibilities that's in play!
Joanna: That's the point where the ushers lock the door! Refuse to let anybody out!
[Peter and Catherine laugh]
Peter: Married couples would be like, is that what we've done, is it?
[They all laugh]
Michael: Yeah! So Sarah Goodes directed this and she's shown again what a fantastic director is, because she's very good at comedy, very good at the complexity of this. And the big feature of this is the set is built on this revolve, which turns at an incredible clip. So the whole stage, just to remind you what a revolve is... well, you know what a revolve is, the whole set is on this enormous turntable which is square. So it induces vertigo, really. Um, but you guys are on this thing watching the world whiz by. Do you have to take little motion pills to keep yourself going?
Catherine: Sometimes you don't know where you've ended up.
Peter: No!
Catherine: You know, you start acting to the back of the theatre!
[Peter and Joanna laugh]
Catherine: And the director always tries to encourage us to walk with great purpose to right to the edge, but it's quite scary because it's moving!
Peter and Michael: Yeah.
Joanna: I think it's interesting, because it's physically, the production is physically precarious. You're feeling the energy and the fragility of the world that you're hearing about, in terms of the words and the relationships. You're actually seeing that physically incarnated as well. And I sort of love that this production throws everything up in the air. I mean, even in terms of the casting. We don't often get to see Catherine doing comedy and she's an absolutely brilliant comic actress.
Catherine: Aw thank you.
Michael: You're a hoot, woman! You're a hoot!
[Catherine laughs]
Peter: An absolute hoot!
[Michael laughs]
Joanna: And similarly with Pete, you know, we usually see him in purely comic roles and it's sort of fantastic for me to see him tackle something which at times is really quite serious and difficult. And I think yeah, the physical world is kind of the danger of the whole experience.
Michael: Well you're blessed with four really marvellous performers. Terrific director, terrific set design. Great script. I just loved it! Congratulations, thanks for coming in.
Joanna, Catherine and Peter: Thank you.
Michael: You've met Catherine McClements and Peter Houghton, and the playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. Her new play is called Three Little Words, it's now on at the Melbourne Theatre Company. Superbly directed, as I say, by Sarah Goodes and it runs there until the 27th of May. And as always you'll find the details on the Books and Arts website!