Actor Mark Harrison. Photo: Supplied.
BY JAN NARY
Things are desperate in Beecham House and for the retired musicians who live there. Financial problems have been kept at bay by annual operatic performances, but time is taking its toll, and this could be a crunch year. A guaranteed drawcard act would be the highly popular opera quartet of Reg, Wilf, Cissy and Jean – but soprano Jean left the quartet and her husband Reg years ago. However, age has caught up with her, and she moves into the retirement village. Problem solved! Or is it…
MATES theatre group’s production of Ronald Harwood’s stage play Quartet will feature Mark Harrison, an actor well-known to Redlands audiences, back on stage after an absence of some years.
“For the last four years I’ve been concentrating on directing rather than acting,” Mark says.
“I hadn’t thought about auditioning, but I got a call from a very persuasive colleague, went to auditions expecting a small feature role and got ambushed into a lead role – and I’m loving it.”
Mark says that he prefers acting to directing.
“As a director, you do your bit, but once the show opens, the actors are in control. As a director, you don’t have lines to learn, but there’s a lot more pressure for it to be a success – you can lose sleep over that sort of thing. And learning lines is like riding a bike – you develop a sort of ‘muscle memory’ in your brain.”
Mark started performing with MATES in 1993, and before that had his first taste of theatre and music with church roadshows.
“That was when the performance bug bit me,” he says. “Some hymns are very good and I’ve also been in a few rock’n’roll and country bands.”
Mark’s current role of Reg is a far cry from hymns and rock.
“I like quirky characters and I’m playing a stuffed shirt with another side to him – like a cross between Basil Fawlty and Richard Harrison. My forte has always been to play a bewildered idiot – and I think I do it quite well.”
For more information, visit https://events.humanitix.com/quartet.
