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The Age
Friday March 26, 2010
Alison Whyte gets her teeth into a juicy role in the MTC's Richard III this month.Alison Whyte was just a teenager when she saw a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Richard III in Melbourne. The 14-year-old had travelled with her mother from Tasmania to see Antony Sher's celebrated performance as the villainous king. "For someone who had starry eyes and wanted to get into drama school, it was very inspirational," she recalls. Nearly 30 years later Whyte is appearing in the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Richard III, playing Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare's bravura study of Machiavellian manipulation."The queen is very ambitious and very capable - a strong woman," says Whyte, 42. "The four women's roles in this show are fantastic and it's good fun - a big, strong narrative with lots of big, black issues and blood and guts."It's quite a departure from her role as sex worker Lauren in Satisfaction, the pay-TV drama in which she has starred for three seasons, winning a Logie for most outstanding female actor in 2008. But for Whyte, who is unfazed by her character's barely-there costumes and revealing sex scenes, the role is, like Queen Elizabeth, simply another juicy part. "Satisfaction has been a career highlight," she says. "It's a well-written, meaty role - a real acting role, and sometimes they are a bit rare."Since she graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1989 and scored a breakthrough gig on Frontline, Whyte has carved out a successful career on stage and screen. "I love the challenge of the minuteness of knowing what you are doing with your eyebrow on film. But there is nothing like a live audience, that shared journey of the theatre." The actor, who lives with her husband, fellow actor Fred Whitlock, and their three children in Yarra Glen, recently hosted a reunion for her fellow VCA drama graduates at the local hotel the couple runs. While that year's best-known alumni - Andrew Upton, Cate Blanchett and Rhys Muldoon - were too busy with work to attend, Whyte believes the 20th anniversary was the right time to catch up. "It was mellower than if we had caught up after 10 years - there might have been more bile and bubble." Still, Whyte didn't go so far as to get behind the bar. "After 14 years in pubs, I still don't know how to pull a beer," she chuckles. That's one role Whyte clearly finds not quite meaty enough.Richard III, April 24 to June 12, MTC, Southbank, phone 8688 0800 or see mtc.com.au
© 2010 The Age