Saturday, March 18, 2006

Herald Sun - 1 March 2006

Edition: 1 - FIRST
Section: ARTS, pg. 081
RAY'S TEMPEST
Where: Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre
When: until April 15
Tickets: $16-$69.60
Bookings: 1300 136 166 or www.mtc.com.au

HERE he is, staring death in the face once again. Yet William McInnes barely shuffles his size-12 feet as he strides into the role of a man with six months to live in Ray's Tempest.

McInnes, who played a cancer-stricken journalist in his wife Sarah Watt's global hit Look Both Ways, has hurled himself into this harrowing yet hilarious play.

Speaking of Steve Rodgers' script, McInnes says: "I must admit, a mate of mine wrote it and he rang up and said: `If you do it they will probably stick it on' so I said: `Yeah, I'll do that'."

This is a play that is in your face: it throws up bits and pieces of life at people. People recognise themselves in it.

"It's blow-out-the-cobwebs theatre.''

The SeaChange star and Heelers hero is no stranger to death and death scares.

His first son, Cosmo, was stillborn before the couple had two other children; he watched his Aunty Rita die; he missed his dad, Colin, so much he wrote a book about him called A Man's Got To Have a Hobby.

While making Look Both Ways he found out his wife had cancer.

"You just cope . . . the treatment is ongoing and she's getting on with life. It's really impressive seeing someone do that,'' he says.

"It's a thing you wouldn't wish on anybody. When it's visited on someone in the family it's a bit hard, but you don't want to make a song and dance about it because that doesn't do any good at all.

"It's very uncomfortable, some of this play, because it deals with lots of things that are not only about mortality but about children and relationships. It can be a bit of a suck-in-the-guts . ."

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