Claudia Karvan’s next act may shock and disgust you

Claudia Karvan has been busy. Work, kids, family. All of it. But now, having turned 50 and with those kids on the edge of the nest, she’s doing something she hasn’t done in 24 years – returning to the theatre.

“In my puritanical work ethic, sort of way, I judged theatre as being too indulgent while I was raising children and paying mortgages and stuff,” she says. “And so now, you can let go of those judgments and celebrate theatre for what it is.”

The last play Karvan performed in was Fred, in 1999, at the Sydney Theatre Company. What she has chosen for her return is the sticky and complex, wildly absurd Edward Albee comedy, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia, which pushes the limits of what people think is acceptable.

Directed by Mitchell Butel, The Goat centres on a family – Stevie, played by Karvan, and her award-winning architect husband Martin, played by Nathan Page, and their son Billy (Yazeed Daher) – and what happens when Martin confesses he is in love with a goat. Yes, a goat.

Karvan as Stevie in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia.Credit: Matt Byrne

“It’s a really unusual play,” says Karvan. “I don’t know if I can compare it to anything else. I call it a crowd pleaser because it’s so fast and it’s so hilarious, but it is challenging. And it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And I think if you don’t have an interest in the absurd, it probably won’t be your thing.”

Karvan is chatting over Zoom from Adelaide, where the play opened at the State Theatre of South Australia on, appropriately enough, Valentine’s Day. “Well, people can go home and just feel so grateful that their partner has not fallen in love with a goat,” she says, laughing.

Karvan laughs a lot – throws her head back and takes great delight in the ridiculous. Which you kind of have to do when you’re dealing with a piece of theatre that delights in asking the unimaginable: to goat, or not to goat?

I just feel so much relief. Lightness, clarity. It’s funny because I didn’t really give two hoots about turning 20 or 30 or 40.

Claudia Karvan on turning 50

When Albee wrote it in 2002, he did it to be provocative, telling Interview magazine “it is going to shock and disgust a number of people. With any luck, there will be people standing up, shaking their fists during the performance and throwing things at the stage.”

So, is falling in love with a goat the worst thing there is? In other words, where is the line?

“There’s so many different ways to play it,” says Karvan. “But one way is, imagine you’re in the 1800s and the goat is not a goat, the goat is a person of colour, or a person of the same sex or that you’ve converted to Islam. It’s a construct that can be swapped out for so many previously controversial decisions or choices.”

“It’s a really unusual play ... and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea”: Claudia Karvan is back on stage in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia.Credit: James Elsby

For Karvan, one of the biggest tragedies in the story is Stevie’s complete loss of identity. Here was a woman who doesn’t work, is wrapped up in her family, and then it’s gone.

“She lives for her husband,” says Karvan. “And she’s articulate, smart, sharp, funny, sexy, playful. But she doesn’t have a career. So that’s where the tragedy works so well because – as one audience member said [during a Q&A] and I thought at the time it was such a strange question – what would the play be like if it was Stevie that fell in love with the goat?

Claudia Karvan and Nathan Page in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia.Credit: Matt Byrne

“I thought about it, and it’s actually an interesting question because there wouldn’t be a play. Because if Stevie fell in love with a goat, Martin would be heartbroken. But he’d still have his career. She, on the other hand, has nothing. Her entire life is built, or been built, around this really deep and beautiful, meaningful relationship. She has more to lose.”

Does Karvan think everyone has a line?

“Oh, I’d say so. You’d hope so,” she says. “But, the line moves and changes and recedes and then advances, doesn’t it? I guess it’s a movable line and it’s down to very specific instances and examples.”

Claudia Karvan in the play Fred in 1999, the last time she appeared on stage with the Sydney Theatre Company.Credit: Tracey Schramm

My line is crumbs on the kitchen bench.

“You’re very tolerant,” she says, laughing. “Mine lands much further out than that.”

There is a line Karvan has crossed – albeit 30 years ago, if you can believe it – when she starred in the film The Heartbreak Kid as a teacher who has an affair with her student, played by Alex Dimitriades. It was the catalyst for the TV series Heartbreak High and last year’s internationally successful Netflix reboot.

It’s wild when you think about The Heartbreak Kid now, that it was completely OK – even sexy – in 1993 to show a teacher having a romantic relationship with her student.

Claudia Karvan and Alex Dimitriades played a teacher and student who were having an affair in the 1993 film The Heartbreak Kid.

“I’ve seen some comments online – ‘When is Claudia gonna apologise?’ and ‘The Heartbreak Kid was transgressive and that was sexual abuse’,” she says. “Needless to say, it would not be made today.

“And yet, so many people still come up to me and say how much they loved it. And then I say, ‘Well, you know, it’s probably not really ethical’, [and they say] ‘Oh well, it was a great movie’.”

Again, it’s the goat.

“[The line], it keeps shifting and it makes us very aware of what side of history will we come down on,” says Karvan. “Will we be on the right side of history?”

Back then, The Heartbreak Kid was seen as a sweet coming-of-age story. These days, Karvan says, her character Christina would be dragged off to court.

“My personal experience of it was that I was 19 years old when I made it,” she says. “So I was too young to play the role anyway and Alex Dimitriades was 17. So in my mind, I’m not looking at it like an audience member, I’m the actress feeling incredibly vulnerable and feeling like we [Karvan and Dimitriades] were equals.”

Karvan with The Secret Life of Us castmates Samuel Johnson and Deborah Mailman.Credit: Network Ten

Karvan jokes that the bigger problem was that her character was Greek.

“My [character’s] name was Papadopoulos,” she says. “I’m more concerned about the fact that I played a Greek girl, and I wasn’t Greek. I’m waiting to be taken down for that. Strip her of her OAM!” She hoots again.

The fact that people still approach Karvan about a movie that she made 30 years ago speaks to her longevity. She is one of the few actors working today who has relevancy across Gen X (Love My Way), Gen Z (The Secret Life of Us became a lockdown hit) and the Millennials (Bump). Even the Boomers who watched her come third in Dancing with the Stars in 2020 fell in love with her.

That she turned 50 last year seems impossible – mainly because I grew up watching her on TV and haven’t aged one day since 2001 – but it’s something Karvan has dwelled on.

“I just feel so much relief,” she says. “Lightness, clarity. It’s funny because I didn’t really give two hoots about turning 20 or 30 or 40, you know, nothing really changed, everything was still very much the same.”

But 50 brought with it the death of her biological father, Peter. She also reportedly split from her long-time partner Jeremy Sparks recently, and her children Albee (yes, he is partly named after the playwright) and Audrey, plus stepdaughter Holiday, are at an age where they don’t need mum around so much.

Karvan and Nathalie Morris in Bump, which she co-created with Kelsey Munro.

“There’s, you know, something going on there,” she says, slowly. “And also having older children, saying goodbye to that part of your life. And sort of returning to the freedom that you had in your 20s. And yet, you’ve got 30 years of wisdom under your belt. That’s interesting…”

She is not saying too much, she says, as it’s ground that’s being covered in an upcoming Australian Story episode on the ABC. “[The producer] said, ‘You know what? We’ve got too much access and too much story!’” she says, tipping her head back and laughing again.

“I am so glad I’m not producing that episode of television. Because it’s going to be impossible. Anyway, it’ll be interesting. I’m just going to treat it like it’s a half hour of entertaining television. It won’t be the final word on my own life.”

What will be the final word on her life?

“I still need to write a book. And then I also need to release an album.”

Can she sing?

“I sang with Hugh Jackman in Paperback Hero. And I sang at my wedding in The Secret Life of Us…” She is off laughing again.

After our interview, Karvan is back on stage in Adelaide for a week, before the show moves to Sydney and opens at Roslyn Packer Theatre.

The play has, so far, “gone down a treat”, says Karvan, even though it seems to be completely acceptable theatre-going behaviour in Adelaide to stretch your legs halfway through a show. If anything, it makes a change from the usually quiet TV sets Karvan inhabits.

“It’s been interesting,” she says. “Trying to block out the audience members whose alarms are going off and have decided that they need to get up and stretch their legs because they’ve got a sore back or talking to the neighbour. That’s great. And embracing all of that. And the walkouts.

“But the laughter is wonderful. It can be quite seductive, but you don’t want to be a slut for the laughs, you’ve really got to stay very emotionally connected.

“And if I can be in the headspace of Stevie, the laughter almost feels like a slap because of the way the play is contrived. The audience are essentially laughing at our pain, laughing at the tragedy that we are going through.”

Once The Goat is over, Karvan is back developing ideas for a possible season four of Bump (where her character Angie regularly spots a line and then takes a running leap over it) and she also has two books she is adapting for the screen, The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad and The Choke by Sofie Laguna. She will also be seen on Disney+ in the upcoming eight-part psychological thriller The Clearing, which is inspired by the real-life cult The Family.

But, as ever, Karvan seems super relaxed by everything going on. Goats, be damned.

“If you need anything else,” she says. “Just make it up!”

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia is at Roslyn Packer Theatre from March 2 to April 1.

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