When actor Francis Greenslade was an ensemble member on Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, he thrived in the sketch show format. “It was like a Christmas stocking,” Greenslade says. “If you didn’t like that joke, well, there’s 100 more, so just wait.”
The Platypus, Greenslade’s ambitious debut play, shares some DNA with a sketch show in that it jumps from one genre to another. Premiering at St Kilda’s Theatre Works, it stars John Leary (MTC’s North by Northwest) and Rebecca Bower (Spooky Files) as Richard and Jessica, a feuding couple whose relationship is faltering.
Francis Greenslade’s ambitious play, The Platypus, will debut at Theatre Works.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Bleakly comic, the form-shifting play also marks Greenslade’s professional directorial debut. “I ended up with this idea that when you’re at home with your partner, you’re as you as you will ever be,” Greenslade says.
“Then when you go out, you meet someone you knew at school and didn’t like very much, or you’re standing in a queue having an idle conversation with a stranger, and you have different personas you put on like a mask.”
Whenever Jessica or Richard leaves home, the play leaps into another genre. “There’s a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Oscar Wilde and also a [Stephen] Sondheim-inspired musical theatre piece composed by Matthew Frank,” Greenslade says. “So it’s a bizarre show that’s a bit like a platypus – a bizarre creature with its beak, fur and the fact it lays eggs.”
Greenslade initially tackled a translation of French playwright, novelist and musician Boris Vian’s absurdist 1959 play The Empire Builders, about a family retreating to ever-smaller corners of their home from a disturbing noise. But he received dispiriting feedback from a major theatre company. “They said, ‘I don’t think the nuclear family is very relevant any more’, and I found that quite gobsmacking.”
Rebecca Bower, John Leary (obscured) and Francis Greenslade in rehearsal for The Platypus.Credit: Nicholas Coghlan
Disillusioned, Greenslade turned his mind to what would become The Platypus instead, but it wasn’t a straightforward journey to the stage. “I’ve carried this play around with me for a long time,” he says. “So much so I had to change one of the scenes because the characters were watching free-to-air, and I’ve had to change it to Netflix to feel more current.”
Labouring over the script for years, it all came together during a long weekend break while appearing as Tilney in MTC’s 2019 production of Shakespeare in Love in Canberra. “It was freezing cold, I didn’t know anyone, and I was trying to save money, so I sat in my hotel room for three days and finished it off,” he says.