Culture
Domestic drama
by Matt Nippert
How Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Michael Hurst’s relationship survived their stage and screen careers – including that time they acted The Goat.
Jennifer wore black stockings with an inch-wide ladder running up the outside of her thigh, while Michael sported a dark pinstripe suit. With haunted eyes and high cheekbones, both sat on the floor and held on to each other for dear life.
It was 1983, love was in the air and the scene was straight out of Kafka.
“Look at the state of us!” marvels actor Michael Hurst, gazing at the earliest photograph of himself and Jennifer Ward-Lealand, the bestockinged actor who later became his wife.
“I remember it being an amazingly mad time, because the play was about madness and paranoia, and then there was a good deal of that going on in my life anyway …” Hurst, normally in a state of perpetual enthusiasm, trails off.
He was 25, she was 20, and both were in other relationships. To add to the mania, this production was The Trial, based on the Franz Kafka novel.
“The safest place to be was there [the stage],” Hurst muses. They never really left it.
More than two decades on, those days of complications, Kafka and what they call their “sackcloth and ashes” existence as penniless actors are well behind them. Hurst and Ward-Lealand, New Zealand’s First Couple of Theatre, have since moved upwards, onwards and outwards.
They’ve hit the screen. Ward-Lealand mostly notably for her two-year stints during the mid-90s in local drama Shortland Street and Australia’s high-rating satirical show Full Frontal. Hurst, not to be outdone, scored the role of Iolaus, the comic sidekick in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The show, running from 1995-99, outrated Baywatch and still draws the pair to US cult television conventions each year.
She also sings. Ward-Lealand was a member of the Front Lawn alongside Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair, and last year put out an album of Marlene Dietrich songs. Meanwhile, Hurst spent 12 episodes of Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess in the director’s chair and says with some mystery that he is working on a “secret project” for the big screen.
Hurst, with gold earrings and two fat rings on his fingers, is possessed of child-like energy. His hands gleefully rub together when he’s excited, which is most of the time, and if his hair wasn’t short from a recent performance that demanded baldness, you’d expect it to stand up on end.
Ward-Lealand, by contrast, is a tower of serenity. A full 12cm taller than her husband, she sits calmly with her arms crossed while Hurst expounds and gesticulates and giggles with glee.
And this month both are returning to their first love, the stage, for the Auckland Festival, AK07. Hurst is directing 12 up-and-coming actors in a production of the 17th-century tragedy ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, while Ward-Lealand is channelling Dietrich for her solo play Falling in Love Again and singing with Auckland gospel supergroup Jubilation.
Where they find the time to juggle this with contributions to various community causes (both are recently minted Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit), the raising of two children, and other stage and screen work is anybody’s guess.
As Ward-Lealand puts it: “Anyone who’s got two freelance careers and children will understand, life is one giant co-ordination exercise. I call it,” she pauses to ask her husband, “what’s it by the seat of your pants?”
“Flying?” he suggests.
“Flying by the seat of our pants while running a military operation.”
Military precision may be needed to maintain their schedules, but the couple also employ a theatrical code – what Ward-Lealand calls “acting shorthand” – when working. “We’re probably our own best critics,” she volunteers. Their advice to each other rarely needs to be said in its entirety.
“We hate being taught things twice, and we often get ‘it’ before the other person has even finished the sentence …” she says before, on cue, her husband cuts her off.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it.”
“We actually hate people pondering the point four times. We like to do. Less talk, more do,” she says.
“Don’t tell me, show me,” Hurst adds. Shorthand in action.
This familiarity can prove frustrating, especially for productions where both have roles – the rest of the cast are sometimes hurrying to catch up, says Hurst. Although the pair met on stage, recent productions in which they both appear have been rare.
Hurst talks of directing Macbeth – Shakespeare is his thing – where he also played the lead. “I didn’t want any sense of Lady Macbeth being this tall harridan who completely dominated her husband,” he says cheekily. “Because I don’t buy that. You’re running against the odds when you’re as tall and statuesque as my wife.”
One notable, and illuminating, exemption to this rule is 2005’s critically acclaimed production of The Goat. Silo Theatre’s creative director Shane Bosher says that when the rights to this play were granted, and Oliver Driver was scheduled to direct and Ward-Lealand to act, the male lead had yet to be cast.
Hurst was considered, says Bosher, but he recalls having reservations. “Amazing actor, but it’s a lot to ask. It’s about a married couple, breaking up, over him f---ing a goat.”
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