The rise of Rose Byrne

What made Rose Byrne leave the Hollywood comedies for which she is best known for serious roles of the stage?

Rose Byrne will perform in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of A View From the Bridge at the end of the year. Picture: Elizabeth Weinberg/New York Times

Rose Byrne is not one to do things by halves. The Australian ­actress, who rose to prominence in 1999 indie film Two Hands and with whom cinemagoers around the world became enamoured in screwball comedies such as Bridesmaids, is gracing one of the world’s most prestigious stages. This weekend she will finish a sellout season starring in Euripides’s Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

That staggering, tragic role about the woman driven to kill the most precious things in the world, written 2500 years ago by the Greek tragedian (who was said to be misanthropic though he loved women) is one of the greatest parts written for females –– a fact highlighted by Byrne’s two eminent Australian predecessors in the role on the New York stage: Judith Anderson and Zoe Caldwell, who died last month.

Byrne’s co-star in this Medea is the man with whom she shares her life, Bobby Cannavale, who plays Jason, and the director is that magician of the progressive Australian stage, Simon Stone.

His Medea is dubbed “after Euripides”, but in Stone’s play a couple who happen to be scientists falls apart. Hearts are broken, children die most terribly, and they discover the awful truth: they are Medea and Jason.

Byrne, speaking to Review from her dressing-room at BAM, says she is relishing the opportunity to tread the boards at one of the world’s most respected stages in one of history’s most famous plays.

“It is an extraordinary role. And it’s a short walk to work,” she says, adding that she and Cannavale “live 10 minutes away”. Byrne says she was attracted to the role by the challenges it posed. “I read it and I thought, this is so great, it’s crazy, and I didn’t even know where to begin with the approach (to the role),” she says. “And then after talking to Simon, he was just so eloquent about the part and about what he was doing with the adaptation. And I was so intrigued, and I thought: ‘I’m so terrified of this. I just have to do it and try not to screw it up too much.’ ”

Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne in the STC’s A View from the Bridge.

Is it a left-field incarnation for the girl from Sydney’s Balmain? Well, way back in 2004 she played the hostage girl, Briseis, the prize of Achilles (played by Brad Pitt), in Troy. Then in 2007 she started doing Damages, with Glenn Close, which made clear that Byrne had something special.

In recent years she has received the imprimatur of the old legends. Close speaks of the Australian’s ability to carry a gag but also of her great courage as a dramatic actress. James Earl Jones (who did You Can’t Take It With You with Byrne in her Broadway debut) praised her stage professionalism and prowess. Then there’s the summing up of that silver-voiced Shakespearean and Shavian, Peter O’Toole: “Byrne is a pure actor.”

As she speaks, she is warm, easy, utterly unaffected, and there’s something uncanny about the gap between the natural friendliness of her manner and the self-immolation she is about to enact on stage. It’s as if she’s switched off from the state she’s about to enter.

The connection of Stone, aided by the footsteps of fellow Australian theatre trailblazers Barrie Kosky and Benedict Andrews, helped convince her the role was worth taking on, she says. “There was a familiarity that lent itself to the process in terms of me wanting to dive in,” she says. “And there was instantly a familiarity with Simon, having known him socially for a long time and having loved and admired his work.”

Not that she’d contemplated the thought of following in the footsteps of actresses Sarah Bernhardt, Fiona Shaw and Anderson to play the famed role.

“It was one of those things that really came out of the blue. We weren’t looking to do another play together. It was winter. We always usually come to Australia for the winter. It was one of those kind of extraordinary opportunities that come and it was a risk, and I just thought it was a risk worth taking.”

So wasn’t it a boggling proposition, one of the most demanding roles in the dramatic canon?

“Without a doubt,” she says. “It was completely daunting and formidable. And something that would never come my way ­usually. I’m more inclined to be associated with comedies now, or less dramatic things. So for Simon to even have the foresight to be interested in me was extraordinary.

“Bringing that character to life was kind of intriguing. And I think his implicit trust in me gave me a lot of strength, more than I would have, even subconsciously, I think.

“That’s why I love doing theatre: you get time –– time to talk about it and to try things and fail. And you do it every night, you might fail or not every night as well, because of course every night is different.” It’s fascinating to hear this starry Hollywood actress — who wants to be more than a star, and who also sounds as if she doesn’t care too much about the perception of her own stardom — talk not only about the reality and risk of dramatic failure but also, confounding the two, as if the rigour of this supreme representation of an actor’s prowess were also a mirror to the moral frailty of humankind.

“The adrenalin on stage is always pretty extreme,” she says. “And then there’s a huge crash.”

Part of the logic of Stone’s version of Euripides’s tragedy is to deconstruct his mythical structuring, almost as if this is the only way to ascend the scaffold.

“It’s not set in the mythical world of the original,” Byrne says. “That makes it more horrifying because the audience members can recognise themselves: That could be me.

“Medea plays on that kind of fear. They’re very dark, deep disturbing waters to navigate at times.”

It must be weirder navigating them with her husband. “Luckily that’s been great. This is going to sound so sentimental but it’s in part because we have such an incredible shorthand, and because he has my back as a scene partner and as a person and as my husband. The support I feel from him every night is really extraordinary. I know that sounds quite cheesy.”

She says the fact a couple is playing Medea and Jason together, arguably a representation of one of the worst marriages ever, isn’t such a big deal.

“It’s more interesting to other people than it is to us, weirdly. It’s been a really joyous experience for us. It’s such a weird word to use because it’s not a joyous play. But I think because it is a heavy play, there always has to be lightness. When you’re doing something so heavy, you have to keep it light in other ways.”

It’s reminiscent not only of the power of blackness of her pas de deux with Close in Damages but the fact she worked twice with one of the greatest actors, O’Toole.

“I was so lucky to work with Peter,” Byrne says. “He was really such a mischievous, brilliant, wildly intelligent and captivating kind of person. He was really extraordinary.”

He was not only the Trojan king, Priam, in Troy, but he also played the old Casanova in a BBC miniseries about the great lover and storyteller, with Byrne as one of his interests.

Byrne is an expert in negotiating that walkway between comedy and tragedy, an art she appreciates from fellow actors. “I recently saw Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler, who’s obviously one of the biggest comedians of the last 30 years, very successful and mainstream,” she says.

“It’s such a great dark turn for a comedian. I do love it, I love seeing those sorts of new incarnations of people.”

One of Byrne’s most memorable comic roles was in Bridesmaids

At the end of the year, Byrne and Cannavale will be at the ­Sydney Theatre Company, doing one of the close approximations to a modern tragedy, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. Byrne recalls seeing a production of the play as a teenager.

“I was just 16 and I was a drama student at high school, and I will just never forget seeing that play, it just rocked my world,” she says. “To finally be able to do it and to be able to do it with Bobby. It is real­ly special, and to do it at home.”

She adds she also wants to do “some kind of cracking modern fantastic comedy. A new Tracy Letts play, say”. And the great classic roles? Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? “This experience has definitely given me a thirst for it. It depends on what comes your way and what doesn’t, as in any career of an actor, and choices in your life and family and children and many different things influence those choices. But it’s been such a pleasure to do this role. It’s so formidable and intimidating which makes it fun, and also scary.”

We go to talk about how the Greeks wrote some of the greatest roles for women: Sophocles’s Elektra, Hecuba in The Trojan Women. Perhaps she should do the whole box and dice?

Rising to the challenge, she says, giggling, “Yeah. I reckon I’ll do the canon.”

Medea runs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until Sunday. The Sydney Theatre Company production of A View from the Bridge runs from December 8 to January 16 next year.

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