Keith Agius has never quite seen a role like the one he is currently playing in The Whale. Not only due to his physical change he has to endure for the role of Charlie – a diminishing man whose health has turned for the worst – but because of the emotional challenges as well. Keith spoke to The AU Review as the season was running.
Something that I haven’t seen in a theatre setting for a long time is someone wearing a fat suit in a theatre. Is this the first time you’ve had to do that for a role?
Absolutely. I have never had such a huge transformation before as an actor. Having to work with the fat suit… just thank goodness we did have it made before rehearsals started, so we got to use it from day one of rehearsals which was fabulous.
How do you adjust with that transformation?
Especially since I weigh 80 kilos and Charlie – in American terms – is 600 pounds. So about 300 kilos, or something like that. (The suit) creates a lot of heat, so I am sweating quite a bit which somebody at that size would have sweated a lot anyway. The weight on my body and chest makes things difficult to breathe too. But it fits in well with who the character is.
You don’t have to work hard to act fat because you are in the fat suit already. I mainly walk with a walker in the first half of the play. Just getting off the couch is particularly difficult and you can understand why the character exists on the couch for most of the play when you see it.
How physically demanding is this role?
The only other role I think that was on par would be when I was called in to understudy John Bell in a Bell Shakespeare production of King Lear – a 20th anniversary production in 2010. I was in the ensemble cast and he was in the role 6 times a week. I did the role 2 times and I was 46 years old when I did that. It was challenging role being in those shoes.
This is up there though.
The character you play, Charlie has a certain way about him. From what I understand, he spends much of the play eating. There seems to be a lot of repetitiveness in his lifestyle. How does this reflect in the old adage that a character has to go on a journey when you are repeating a lot of things?
Well, Charlie does go on a journey. He certainly does. He’s been a recluse for about ten years and had a traumatic event in his life. He has a carer to look after him too. He basically has shut out the world and denied everything for quite a long time. Sure it’s a repetitive pattern but when we see him in the play, we see him ‘on the way out,’ basically. The clock is ticking.
A whole lot of people in his life come back into his life and he has to find redemption in this one week. I believe there is a huge journey there. Many challenges are there for him, to move on. I think he moves on the most in the play.
This play focuses on a part of the gay community that I would think many people don’t know too much about – people who feel it’s better to be reclusive. Can you tell me about why you think it is important the story of this part of the gay community needs to be told?
Well, I reckon a lot of the Mardi Gras festival seems to be a little light on. It focuses on the usual things, very much like body image, sex and partying. There have been events that focus on the elderly in the gay community and the darker realms those people go through, but I think there isn’t enough things focusing on people like Charlie, who are morbidly obese, who can’t go out, don’t go out for a myriad of reasons – not only because of them being homosexual.
This play gives a face to those people and the difficulty that they deal with. Charlie, in this story was at one point a functional human. Something happens which can happen to anyone – so it resonates with those outside the community too.
Mardi Gras is a celebration of the LGBTQI communities, but do you think the festival should incorporate more serious productions like The Whale, which allow more thought about the issues that face these communities?
The gay community is not immune from the problems of the wider world. Especially in The Whale we deal with characters who were married, family many other details that relate to everyone. There are universal problems that we see in the play that we see in all our lives. Sexuality doesn’t preclude us from those issues.
Charlie is a pretty amazing human being to go through what he’s gone through. There’s a lot of humour in this as well. It’s not a really dark piece. There is also quite a lot of levity in this as well. He uses that to cope a lot of the time as well. I think people dealing with those sort of problems like obesity and morbidity make light of their situation.
You work with a bunch of actors in the play who have a lot of history in their characters as well. These characters don’t seem welcoming for the audience and for your character as well. Is it interesting to work with a cast who take on these attitudes on stage?
We did quite a rigorous audition process just so that once they cast me in the role then we really had to get the right chemistry going. Shane Anthony – the director and Andrew Henry, the artistic director really, really focused on getting the right people who could work with me as well. Chloe Bayliss is absolutely perfect as the estranged daughter of Charlie. She’s turned out to be quite an interesting character in this production.
Meredith Penmann is superb as my carer. Just got so much heart and vulnerability. Hannah Waterman is an English actor who has been here in Australia for a couple of years now. She is quite big in the UK doing Eastenders and brings a wealth of experience. She is incredible. Just a whirlwind. Alex Beaumann is a great young talent as well too.
We all work so beautifully together and just glue together in supporting each other.
What do you want audiences to come away feeling from this production?
I suppose not judging a person on their look. On their first impression. Normally when you see someone morbidly obese you do make assumptions about them. I think what this play does is it turns you around and makes you understand and love Charlie. You see the human being underneath all of that as well.
I think that’s the journey of the play really – to see his redemptive qualities and to see a human being underneath it all. A lot of the characters come in and judge him quite quickly. Then there is the process of knowing him. I think it’s about changing your perceptions about people.
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The Whale is currently in its season at The Old Fitzroy Theatre in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo until March 4. Get tickets here. It is a part of Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.
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