Noni Hazlehurst swaps Play School for the pub
Acclaimed actor and Flinders Drama Centre alum Noni Hazlehurst returns to Adelaide with The Lark, a powerful, one-woman play set in a Melbourne pub that explores deeply human issues around life choices, loss and leaving.
Can you tell us about the premise of The Lark?
It’s set in an inner-city pub in Melbourne and it’s a one-woman show where my character Rose Grey has been born in this building and lived there all her life. She has been brought up by her father, as her mother abandoned them when Rose was a baby. Rose ends up taking over the pub when her father retires, nurses him through his passing, and she has carried on to this point where the pub is being sold and is going to be pulled down.
Tell us more about your character, Rose.
She’s of a certain generation. I mean, I’m 72 so she’s roughly the same age as me, and she had few options in life. She’s been tied to this place – well, she’s chosen to be tied to it, but I think she’s at this point in her life, she’s wondering about her choices and realising that it’s actually too late, that what sustained her no longer exists; the socio-economic environment that she lives in, that’s all changed. It’s no longer a working man’s area – it’s been gentrified, as happens in so many capital cities. The inner city that was once often slummy has become incredibly expensive. So, you know, the clientele has dropped off, and everyone’s gotten old. Rose is reflecting on what those choices have led to and what her life has amounted to. And I guess the bottom line for all of us is that our lives only amount to the smallest hill of beans in the grand scheme of things.
You have worked with acclaimed writer Daniel Keene and director Matt Scholten in the past on Mother. How does that history together help with this collaboration?
I trust these two guys immensely, and they trust me and to have that ongoing relationship with an extraordinary writer and an amazing director, what more could an actor ask? You know that this amazing man is writing stuff for me, it’s such a gift and such an honour and such a responsibility, and luckily, Matt and I understand each other, and we’re both deeply emotional people, and so we kind of love bringing this stuff to life, because it’s just so exciting.
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To me, the best art is about connection. You know that we connect as human beings in the theatre, and it’s the last place where there’s this one-on-one human interaction, that deep human connection. Daniel’s work is full of that, to the point where, in performance every night, I can find emotions just through the writing, I don’t have to conjure up things in my own life necessarily, although obviously they colour my experience. But Daniel’s writing is so evocative and so deeply human that it never fails to move me.
So what does The Lark tap into for audiences?
It’s hard to say what the themes are because there’s something for everybody in all of Daniel’s work. He has so many things that he touches on, and they’re all deeply human, whether it’s grief or loss, or the wonderful people you’ve met during your life, character studies, but Daniel really connects you to human foibles and human frailty and humour, which I just warm to in spades in his work. There are so many layers, it’s wonderful. The Lark really gets to the heart of why we choose to do what we do. Are we even conscious when we make those choices, or do we just let life throw us into a set of circumstances that we just drift along with? So again, you know, there’s all these different themes that you can question about your own motivations and your own experiences.
Do you still love what you do?
Yes, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it, if I didn’t think it was worth anyone’s while or anyone’s money. I’m just immensely honoured and privileged to, at my age, be given work to do that’s so deeply affecting and unusual. It’s my job to present the work and to try and do it justice.
The Lark plays the Space Theatre from June 25 – July 5
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