Possums, crocodiles and the curse of Macbeth: The perils of outdoor theatre

There’s an adage in show business that Australian Shakespeare Company artistic director Glenn Elston breezes straight past: never work with children or animals. There have been plenty of both since his company did its very first performance of The Wind in the Willows in the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1987.

First, there are the possums. During a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the middle of the gardens, the actor playing Lysander suddenly found himself with an unexpected scene partner. “This possum came down the tree and right up onto the rostrum and sat right next to the guy,” Elston recalls. “He just looked down and went, ‘I’m not going on until I see your equity card.’ Bang. The whole audience just went nuts.”

Glenn Elston, the artistic director of the Australian Shakespeare Company, at Bistrot d’Orsay.Credit: Wayne Taylor

We’ve met at French restaurant Bistrot d’Orsay, which adjoins the Athenaeum Theatre – where Elston has been one of three directors for almost four decades. I ask if that means he’s a regular at the restaurant, but independent theatre doesn’t stretch to regular bistro meals – lunch is usually a couple of sushi rolls. But as today we are splashing out on someone else’s dime, we both opt for entrees as well as mains: pan-fried scallops for Elston and cured salmon for me.

When he does treat himself to Bistrot d’Orsay, Elston is partial to the seafood linguine with mussels, prawns, fish and scallops in a leek-tomato sauce, so he chooses that for main. I toy with the idea of steak frites, but our gracious waiter steers me in the direction of the fish of the day: barramundi, with blistered tomatoes and capers. You never know the road not travelled, but the fish is excellent, with crisp skin and just the right amount of acid punch.

Possums, it turns out, have visited the Australian Shakespeare Company’s productions more than once. “In Sydney, the first time we did Romeo and Juliet, I came up with this brilliantly stupid idea, and I said to the stage manager, ‘I think it would be great if in the market scene, when the cart comes in and it’s got baskets on it, let’s mix in some real fruit because that way, the actors can grab an apple,’” he says. “Guess what possums like? Real fruit. All of a sudden, there’s like four possums coming down the tree onto the cart.”

Scallops at Bistrot d’Orsay.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Animal visitors aren’t always of the cute and cuddly variety, either. Elston recalls a tour performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Darwin Amphitheatre that ended up being memorable for reasons having nothing to do with fairies. His partner was running the box office with their children at the end of the night, and the audience were making their way out of the venue across the grass. “All of a sudden, she sees coming across the grass a three-metre big, fat brown snake. A very healthy, big brown snake coming along, and Darwin people just go, ‘Yeah, snake, step back.’ She’s grabbing our kids, putting them up on the table, and [the audience] just stepped back, separated. Snake just went over the road to the other part of the garden.”

And then there was the time they performed at Kakadu National Park and the park ranger came up to the company every night when they were setting up with the ominous but helpful phrase, “I’ll go and find out where that crocodile is.”

“Every night he was there with his really powerful torch,” says Elston. “We’d look out over the water, and all of a sudden there would be a reflection of the eyes. And he’d say, ‘There he is, but don’t you worry – he’s over on the other side. I’ll keep an eye on him.’”

The cured salmon with dill and capers.Credit: Wayne Taylor

That’s the animals. And then there are the children. Elston’s first show with the Australian Shakespeare Company was Wind in the Willows in 1987, and it is now a beloved Melbourne summer tradition. In fact, it was Willows that first gave Elston the idea to do outdoor theatre. He had already fallen in love with the work when he was studying at the University of Adelaide and went to visit a young woman he was hoping to date, only to find her sitting with a friend and reading Wind and the Willows aloud. “I thought, just how beautiful to do that for a friend. It just stuck with me,” he says.

After university, Elston rode his motorbike from Adelaide to Melbourne to study at the Victorian College of the Arts, and on the very first day of class, students went across the road at lunch to the Royal Botanic Gardens. “It is so beautiful, and it really had a big impact on me,” he says. It was a place he would go whenever he needed to relax or think, and became one of his favourite spots in Melbourne.

Years later, when he was living in London, he found himself pining for the Australian summer as he remembered his would-be girlfriend’s reading aloud. “I was living in this shitty little flat in Lewisham, and I had to travel on the train and then British Rail to get there. And some nights, I’d sit in bed in the freezing cold and read The Wind in the Willows. And I’d think, ‘Wouldn’t this be great if you could do it outdoors in the Botanic Gardens?’ And that’s what happened.”

Families return to the show year after year, and those who first saw it as children now bring their own kids. Elston says seeing that, and seeing children enjoy Shakespeare plays in a relaxed environment is one of the great joys of doing what he does.

Paul Morris (Weasel, left), Ryan Hawke (Toad) and Maverick Newman (Badger) in The Wind in the Willows.Credit: Ben Fon

“A year never goes by where I don’t see Wind in the Willows, because I don’t direct it any more, but I stay very involved,” he says. “There’s just something amazing about watching the family enjoy themselves at theatre together, and then when you see it happening in the Shakespeare [plays], it just ups the ante.”

He says children in the audience are often transfixed by the intensity of the tragedies, but Shakespeare comedies are so broad that even with the barrier of unfamiliar language, they get many of the jokes.

Though there are limits. At a show in Sydney, two women arrived with five children. They had tickets for the kids, but none for themselves. The ticket taker told the adults they would need to buy tickets as well, but the women said: “No, we’re not staying.” What to do? The ticket taker rang Elston. “I said, ‘Unfortunately, you have to tell them that the minute they walk away, you’re going to call the police to report the children as abandoned, because that’s not our job.’” The adults reconsidered, and ended up having an evening of outdoor theatre.

The biggest threat to outdoor theatre, of course, isn’t four-legged (or no-legged) co-stars or unaccompanied children – it’s weather. The company doesn’t have weather insurance – too expensive – so Elston and his crew have become amateur meteorologists, glued to weather apps and obsessed with reading changing winds.

The lunch bill.Credit:

He recalls a recent performance of The Wind in the Willows when the rain radar was looking ominous before the performance began. “I went out to the audience, and I said, ’OK, everyone, listen up really carefully. It is going to rain at some time between now and the end of this show. It is going to rain, and it’s coming in our direction. I can’t see how it’s going to stop. I don’t quite know how bad it is ... So now’s your chance to leave if you’re going to be worried about it, and you can rebook on our website another show.” But he says no one left. “It wasn’t until maybe 80 per cent through the show that it came down … It just started as this scene was finishing, where they go in to save Toad Hall. And then I stepped out and just said, ‘Hey everyone, now’s the time to pack up. It’s going to rain. The actors will not be coming back, but don’t worry, they do win back Toad Hall.’”

The most famous theatre superstition of all, of course, involves the name of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, and it happens to be the one Elston is working on when we meet for lunch. He starts to describe how Melbourne’s famously inclement weather might affect coming performances of Macbeth, when I note with surprise he seems to have no problem saying the name. He pauses, then laughs. “We’re in a restaurant!” So, would he say it in a theatre? He shrugs. “I try not to, out of respect for people that it upsets. Some people take it very seriously.”

Though he does admit there might be something to the curse of Macbeth. During the Australian Shakespeare Company’s first run of the show in 1993, every performance was being interrupted by a twin-engine prop plane, which was used at the time for sightseeing tours. “They would deliberately fly over the Botanic Gardens and point out, ‘Oh, look, they’re watching a play.’” In December, the plane crashed shortly after take-off. All 11 people on board survived. But it did put an end to the nightly interruption.

The Australian Shakespeare Company’s production of Macbeth runs at the Royal Botanic Gardens until February 28.

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