SCANDALOUS BOY
Written and directed by David Atfield
The Street Theatre
Explicit content: restricted to ages 18 and above.
November 14-23. Tickets $25-$35. Bookings: 62471223 or thestreet.org.au.
Sex, violence, nudity, intrigue: Ethan Gibson says, "If you enjoy Game of Thrones, you'll enjoy Scandalous Boy."
Scandalous Boy begins with a statue of Antinous – played by Gibson – coming back to life in the 21st century to take the audience back to his own time and reclaim his place in history – as the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian.
The 23-year-old Canberra actor – in his first professional role – plays the title part in Canberra writer-director David Atfield's play: Antinous, the teenage "favourite" of the openly gay Hadrian (Nicholas Eadie). After Antinous drowned in AD130 at the age of 19 Hadrian proclaimed him a deity.
Eadie – who's had a long career on stage and screen since graduating from NIDA in 1980 – says of Antinous, "He was apparently more popular than Christ for 300 years but the Christians got rid of him and had they not our mores and our sexual taboos might have been quite different today."
The play is, he says "about power and sex and sex and power together, about homophobia and about misogyny" – that last aspect coming through in the character of Sabina (Emma Strand), Hadrian's wife, with whom he only reluctantly consummated the marriage and who never gave him an heir.
As for Antinous, despite Hadrian's love for him, boundaries of class still apply and the young man can never become an aristocrat – though he is, posthumously, made a deity.
"He jumps from zero to hero."
Scandalous Boy has, Eadie says, "been quite confronting for me as an actor – not so much the nudity, I'd done that before, but some of the sex is rough."
Even though it is simulated, he thinks it will be just as confronting for audiences, too. This is not a genteel ancient-world story.
"It's not Ben-Hur, it's bend over," Eadie jokes.
"David seems to want to do that – he wants to push the buttons of people, to test the waters. He thinks theatre is a bit safe and this is an opportunity to make it what it should be."
Eadie says Australia seems to be a more prudish country now than it was in the 1970s when theatre productions like Hair and Oh, Calcutta! broke boundaries with nudity on stage. He spent time in Europe and says it's different there: "Europeans don't have a problem with being naked."
The play was developed through The Street Theatre's Hive and First Seen programs and named as a finalist in the annual American drama competition of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation in New York for works concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender life.
Gibson says, "It's a challenging piece." He's not referring to the nudity but to the complexity of the characters and their relationships.
"Antinous was an eremenos, a male prostitute, who rose through the ranks to become highly influential," Gibson says.
As depicted in the play, "He's smart and ambitious and uses his body and uses sex to influence others, not just Hadrian. He reads people very well and like anyone who's extremely attractive he feels he needs to prove himself as an intellectual as well."
Gibson began acting as a teenager in college and when he graduated did some productions with Canberra Youth Theatre. This gave him the confidence to audition for the National Institute of Dramatic Art and while he didn't get in, the feedback was encouraging and he decided to pursue acting, studying for a year at the Actors Studio Australia. He likes doing whatever acting he can – theatre, short films – to gain experience and learn from seasoned performers.
"This year was my best year yet – I was in August:Osage County with Free-Rain and it was fantastic."
He intends to audition again for NIDA and has enjoyed working with one of its alumni, Eadie, who was last in Canberra several years ago touring with the play Two Brothers. He lived here for a while as a child when his father, Mervyn. was working at Parliament for the ABC.
"Canberra is very pleasant and really beautiful, especially this time of year."
