Australian actor Mark Lee has worked in the entertainment industry for over thirty years.
Perhaps his most prominent role, Mark starred alongside Mel Gibson in the 1981 classic 'Gallipoli'. Mark works as an actor in film, TV and theatre, and has also worked as a director in both film and theatre.
Currently, Mark stars in 'The Time Machine', a one-man show written by Sydney playwright Frank Gauntlett, based on the 1895 H.G Wells novel by the same name. The show is set to play at the NIDA Playhouse Theatre.
“My mother gave me the H.G Wells sci-fi novels when I was a kid. So I'd read them many, many years ago and I was a big fan,” Mark says. “H.G Wells is a wonderful writer, but he didn't call it science fiction, he called it science romance – which I find quite lovely.”
“The story is about a scientist in the late Victorian period who invents a machine which allows people to travel to the past and the future. He jumps about 800,000 years into the future. There he encounters humanity. It's a very idyllic life that humanity leads, although they don't seem very intelligent and they all look alike. But they’re very peaceful little creatures. And he thinks that this is what humanity has done, that there's no more war or industrialisation. But then he makes a discovery that there's a darker side to this. That humanity has become two species. That's when their world turns into a bit of a nightmare for him,” Mark says.
“The play is a one-man show, essentially I tell a story. What gives it the drama is that as the traveller is telling the story, sometimes he gets lost into the nightmare of what he's encountered. And he's finding it harder and harder as he's talking to the audience to pull himself out of it. It's almost like he's reliving the story.”
Mark goes on to explain the hidden meaning in the story of 'The Time Machine', “In essence it's part of a parable. It's H.G Wells reaction to the disparity between the rich and the poor in Victorian industrialised England. It got to the point where some of the tories in parliament wanted to build a wall”, he adds: “That sounds familiar doesn’t it,” before laughing.
“They wanted to build a wall fencing off the poorer parts of England, like the East End. Because they believed that poverty was a disease you could catch.”
'The Time Machine' has been adapted into film and television several times in the past hundred years. “Having seen the films, I think they fail on several levels because they forget what the book was about. They take an element of the book and turn it into a film, and they forget the parable in the book which was talking about the disparity. The beauty about the stage is that if I do my job properly, people begin to build a world in their heads. They have their own heroes and monsters.”
Although it is a science fiction story, this adaptation of 'The Time Machine' doesn't waste its time with extravagant special effects: “This production has things that add texture to it. We're adding a few visuals, but not literal visuals. You talk about walking through a beautiful green garden, you light it in greens and gentle blues and whites. Or you go through a sunset and suddenly there's reds on the stage. There's a soundscape as well which is a big part of it. The soundscape kind of adds to the creepiness of it.”
This is Mark's first time performing in a one-man show. “When I first did it I was absolutely terrified. Because the first thing that goes through your mind is; 'if I forget there's no one to cover for me'. It's just you. And so, there was a great terror.
“There's no fourth wall, so [the character] talks to them. A smaller theatre is better because you need to be close to them.”
