Method In Madness

Nicholas Eadie has been gracing stage and screen for decades now. An AFI Award winner, you may have seen him on screen in the 1987 mini-series Vietnam, or the long-running ABC show GP, or more recently on stage as Sam in the original cast of Mamma Mia!. Yet, somewhat surprisingly for a Sydney-based actor, he's never graced the stage at New Theatre. “I'm a bit ashamed to say it but I've never been to the New Theatre, it's a bit embarrassing. I was very much an eastern suburbs boy,” he sheepishly admits. That's all changed with Jerusalem.

“You normally do co-op for one of a few reasons. It's either a great role – I did Macbeth at the Darlinghurst Theatre, Macbeth was my Hamlet; or a great play that's never been seen that should be seen and hasn't been done, often because it's been overlooked by the major theatre companies because of the size of it – they just can't afford to have to large casts; or a fantastic director that I've never worked with but I've always wanted to,” Eadie explains candidly. “It's a labour of love.”

In the case of Jerusalem, it was two of the three – Eadie plays Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in the Australian premier of Jez Butterworth's play about the disintegration of rural communities and the pervasive excesses of the nanny state. Eadie had previously worked with director Helen Tonkin on another Butterworth play, The Night Heron, for Griffin Stablemates. “Rooster's a bit of a lowlife, a bit of a drunk – he starts his morning with half a cup of vodka with milk and a gram of speed and it sort of goes from there,” Eadie gives a brief character synopsis, and an explanation as to why method acting won't be part of the prep: “I've had my wild times in the past, but I've never got to that stage!”

Working alongside Tonkin in The Night Heron ensured she got in touch with Eadie when casting Jerusalem, but not before a couple of friends overseas had taken the opportunity to tell Eadie he was perfect for the role. “People saw it in London and they got in touch with me and said, 'You have got to go for this role; he's a drug dealer, he's wild, he's that, he's this,' and I thought, is that what you think of me? You're typecasting me as that sort of person?” Eadie asks in mock offence.

Rooster has been on a patch of land for nearly three decades, living like a gypsy and paying no rates or taxes. In Jerusalem, we witness the stand off between Rooster and his motley assortment of hangers on, and the force of police and council.

“It's a comment on the homogenisation of England and the world, the whole nanny state thing of rules and regulations; there's not many places left in the Western world for an outcast, an outlaw, a rebel, for someone, like Rooster, who is a law unto themselves,” says Eadie.