Rachel Griffiths and Thomas Sadoski perform in "Other Desert Cities" at the Booth Theater in New York. The family drama, which had its Off Broadway premiere in January, has moved to Broadway. Photo: Sara Krulwich/New York Times
Philippa Hawker, The Age, reports
RACHEL Griffiths apologises for ''talking American'', but she's just come off stage and it takes a while for her to shed her accent. She is on her phone, signing autographs outside the Broadway theatre where she has just made her debut in Other Desert Cities, which opened to glowing reviews. The New York Times called it ''a beautifully modulated Broadway debut''.
Griffiths plays a writer home for the holidays with a surprise for her patrician political family, particularly her parents, played by Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach. She has the manuscript of a memoir with her. For her siblings - and her mother and father, who bear some resemblance to Ronald and Nancy Reagan - its contents are potentially explosive.
The role is part of a continuum, Griffiths says wryly. ''I've made a career out of trying to understand the American family - how it can stay together and evolve out of its claustrophobic stereotypes.'' Coming from a different cultural background, she has been struck by, she says, an American preoccupation with appearance, with the way a family presents itself to the world.
Other Desert Cities is written by Jon Robin Baitz, who also created the TV series, Brothers and Sisters, in which Griffiths starred between 2006 and 2011. Before that, she was in Six Feet Under, the HBO drama about a dynasty of undertakers.
Spending 10 years on network television, Griffith says she relished the chance to do other work when she could, particularly films ''when the story is so important to the person making it''. She can be seen in an Australian movie, Burning Man, Jonathan Teplitzky's fractured exploration of a life in crisis. Griffiths plays a therapist who has a relationship with the central character, Tom (Matthew Goode), a volatile figure whose life seems out of control, for reasons not immediately apparent.
Her role is a small one, she says, but she could see that the movie had a cluster of female roles ''that needed to be the real McCoy, that needed gravitas. And I wanted to be part of the tapestry.'' She is a fan of Teplitzky's previous films (Better Than Sex and Gettin' Square) and regards him as ''one of our most underrated directors''. When she read the script, she says, she wasn't clear how the structure worked, ''but I didn't need to know that in order to do my job''. The important thing, she adds, ''was I knew that he would make sense of it''.
When she saw the finished film at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, she says she was struck by the way Teplitzky had captured male experience. ''I got mad at him and told him he had made a much better movie than the one I signed on for. I knew it was going to be good, but not this good.''
Meanwhile, she's making the most of her Broadway experience. The play, she believes, has a good chance of winning a Pulitzer Prize. ''It's sharp and human and hopeful; I think there's a hunger for that.''
She talks about the role of the writer, of her interest in the author Joan Didion. There is a YouTube video, directed by Didion's nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, of the author reading from her work. Griffiths watches it every night. She says it makes her think about some of the issues at the centre of the play: what rights does a writer have? Whose story is she telling, and is it hers to tell? Whose truth, and what truth?
These are questions that ''resonate with audiences on every level'', she says. In Other Desert Cities, ''there's a moment when I take the manuscript and hold it up to the fire, and last night someone in the audience called out, 'burn it'; they couldn't help themselves''.
She thinks the play could do well in her homeland, ''although Australia, and the Australian media don't really understand the American right on a molecular level, and this play makes sense of it in a very interesting way''.
In fact, she says, ''I'd love to see how it would play. With Judy Davis, Jack Thompson … And me,'' she says, laughing.
Burning Man is now showing.
RACHEL Griffiths apologises for ''talking American'', but she's just come off stage and it takes a while for her to shed her accent. She is on her phone, signing autographs outside the Broadway theatre where she has just made her debut in Other Desert Cities, which opened to glowing reviews. The New York Times called it ''a beautifully modulated Broadway debut''.
Griffiths plays a writer home for the holidays with a surprise for her patrician political family, particularly her parents, played by Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach. She has the manuscript of a memoir with her. For her siblings - and her mother and father, who bear some resemblance to Ronald and Nancy Reagan - its contents are potentially explosive.
The role is part of a continuum, Griffiths says wryly. ''I've made a career out of trying to understand the American family - how it can stay together and evolve out of its claustrophobic stereotypes.'' Coming from a different cultural background, she has been struck by, she says, an American preoccupation with appearance, with the way a family presents itself to the world.
Other Desert Cities is written by Jon Robin Baitz, who also created the TV series, Brothers and Sisters, in which Griffiths starred between 2006 and 2011. Before that, she was in Six Feet Under, the HBO drama about a dynasty of undertakers.
Spending 10 years on network television, Griffith says she relished the chance to do other work when she could, particularly films ''when the story is so important to the person making it''. She can be seen in an Australian movie, Burning Man, Jonathan Teplitzky's fractured exploration of a life in crisis. Griffiths plays a therapist who has a relationship with the central character, Tom (Matthew Goode), a volatile figure whose life seems out of control, for reasons not immediately apparent.
Her role is a small one, she says, but she could see that the movie had a cluster of female roles ''that needed to be the real McCoy, that needed gravitas. And I wanted to be part of the tapestry.'' She is a fan of Teplitzky's previous films (Better Than Sex and Gettin' Square) and regards him as ''one of our most underrated directors''. When she read the script, she says, she wasn't clear how the structure worked, ''but I didn't need to know that in order to do my job''. The important thing, she adds, ''was I knew that he would make sense of it''.
When she saw the finished film at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, she says she was struck by the way Teplitzky had captured male experience. ''I got mad at him and told him he had made a much better movie than the one I signed on for. I knew it was going to be good, but not this good.''
Meanwhile, she's making the most of her Broadway experience. The play, she believes, has a good chance of winning a Pulitzer Prize. ''It's sharp and human and hopeful; I think there's a hunger for that.''
She talks about the role of the writer, of her interest in the author Joan Didion. There is a YouTube video, directed by Didion's nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, of the author reading from her work. Griffiths watches it every night. She says it makes her think about some of the issues at the centre of the play: what rights does a writer have? Whose story is she telling, and is it hers to tell? Whose truth, and what truth?
These are questions that ''resonate with audiences on every level'', she says. In Other Desert Cities, ''there's a moment when I take the manuscript and hold it up to the fire, and last night someone in the audience called out, 'burn it'; they couldn't help themselves''.
She thinks the play could do well in her homeland, ''although Australia, and the Australian media don't really understand the American right on a molecular level, and this play makes sense of it in a very interesting way''.
In fact, she says, ''I'd love to see how it would play. With Judy Davis, Jack Thompson … And me,'' she says, laughing.
Burning Man is now showing.
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