Actor/Comedian Eddie Perfect will be returning to the stage with a new season of his dark comedy ‘The Beast’.
It’s easy to forget how dark Eddie Perfect’s mind is. Through his roles as a presenter on the long-running children’s show ‘Playschool', and Mick Holland in the hit drama ‘Offspring’, audiences have become accustomed to Eddie as the handsome and friendly gentleman with a gifted singing voice. However, there’s always been a darkness lurking in Eddie’s mind, which audiences have seen through his stage shows and savagely satirical songs covering topics like parents paying for their children’s plastic surgery. Eddie will be returning to wreak havoc on the stage with his play ‘The Beast’.
Written by and starring Eddie, the play follows three couples who have fled from the city to live on a farm, hoping their new ethical and sustainable life there will help them atone for a dark past. When the group of friends decide to purchase a 14-month-old Angus calf to slaughter for their meal, as they imagine happens often in the country, the experience proves more confronting than first thought.
Image © Jules Tahan (UA Creative)After a successful 2013 season with the Melbourne Theatre Company, Eddie is delighted about taking his self-described “middle-class nightmare” on tour, shocking new audience members. However, what’s most shocking is that this production has its origins in real-life events.
“I lived in the Yarra Valley for two years, and made friends with people in the wine industry. One couple decided to host a dinner party called ‘The Feast Of The Beast’, where they bought a 450-kilogram, 14-month-old Angus calf to be slaughtered. We all went to the butchery to choose a part of the cow we wanted cooked. When the butcher turned up, he came in a mobile butcher/cool room trailer. When he was ready to do the slaughtering, the trailer shifted, and he cut his hand on his own knife. He had to be rushed off to the emergency room to be stitched up. He came back to do the butchering, but while he was at the hospital we wondered, 'What would we have done if he couldn’t do the butchering? Would we have been able to do the butchering ourselves?'”
Eddie was delighted at the idea of pushing this already grim scenario to an even darker place. His interest in the scenario led to further questions about ethics and the insincerity of appearing to be nice. Would the facing of the reality of farming life, and being exposed to such a brutal practice as butchering, lead to the exposure of their true personalities? Is leading this reduced-carbon lifestyle going to make you a good person?
“A lot of the play is about redemption. The middle-class live in this incredibly fortunate inherited wealth, but realise that parts of the world have nothing. So, when a cause comes along that makes it look like they’re giving back to the Earth, it becomes something to grasp on to to even out the scales. It’s not about whether causes are good, but whether we’re just trying to be seen doing good, rather than actually doing good. It undermines every ethical reason for having the dinner in the first place.
“We’re only a couple of generations away from this practice – a lot of our parents can remember their parents having to decapitate chicken. Inner-city types have become removed from that, and are now squeamish about it, and can’t detach ourselves in that same way. But, we’re still happy to eat meat as long as it’s from the supermarket. It’s a weird contradiction.”
After first staging ‘The Beast’ in Melbourne, Eddie is looking forward to returning and turning discomfort into laughs. He will be touring with a new cast who are just as enthusiastic about this squeamish play as he is, which will feature violence, blood, guts, and gunshot effects. After wrapping up the interview and wishing him the standard theatre well-wishes, “Break a leg”, Eddie quickly replies as fast as the jet his humour is blacker than: “That might be one of the few things that doesn’t happen.”
Eddie Perfect Tour Dates
27 July-21 August – Sydney Opera House25 August-4 September – Comedy Theatre (Melbourne)
15-18 September – Queensland Performing Arts Centre
