Waters keeps Lennon’s spirit alive
John Waters, the Australian actor of Offspring fame, is on the phone. It’s a week before season six of the beloved comedy drama premieres in New Zealand and he is, as fans now know, no longer in the show.
In the first episode, it’s revealed that his character, the lovable and roguish Proudman patriarch Darcy, has had a heart attack and – shock, horror – died. Or as Waters puts it: ‘‘For some reason, Darcy just popped his clogs’’.
The unexpected death shocks the quirky Proudman clan, including the show’s central character Nina (Asher Keddie), who ignored a phone call from her father just before his fatal heart attack.
This makes sense as a bold plot device, a clever script writing decision that pulls family we know and love together at the start of a new season following a two year-break off air, but it has saddened fans – an emotion that Waters, 67, hasn’t escaped.
‘‘Funerals make good TV don’t they? But I was sad.’’
Sad, because he loved doing the show with its great formula and script and plus he really liked Darcy who he’s played since the series began in 2010.
‘‘Darcy I saw as a kind of naive guy who is very warm hearted and put himself openly to the world and that’s not the sort of character I normally played so I thought ‘oh, that would be fun’. And interacting with all the others in this crazy family has been just a great decision – I’m glad they asked me in the first place.’’
There are many different takes on why the show has been so popular. His own version is astute: ‘‘It dared to be adult in a world of bland sitcoms…Offspring was real life, real inner-city life with warts and all. I liked that.’’
He may not be on our television sets via Offspring, but this week New Zealanders can see Waters on stage performing his two-man show Lennon: Through a Glass Onion at The Civic in Auckland. Accompanied by Bill Risby (Leo Sayer, The Supremes), Waters plays guitar and sings a selection of Lennon’s songs, linking them together with an invented monologue to tell the life story of the legendary musician.
He’s been performing the show on and off since he wrote it in 1992, touring extensively across Australia with stints in London’s West End and a four-month season in New York City, to many positive reviews.
And yes, he still rehearses and, no, he hasn’t tired of it.
‘‘The joy of doing this show always comes back to me every time I go back to it and it also continues on through every live performance. It’s something I relive every night very easily…’’
Waters grew up around acting in London. His father was a Scottish character actor, but he was always drawn more to music, playing bass and singing in a blues band.
As a teenager and young adult in Britain during the 1960s, The Beatles were of course a big influence.
‘‘John Lennon was a driving force and a great voice of a slightly older generation than mine, like an older brother saying ‘it’s alright, you don’t have to believe everything they tell ya’. And it was a great thing, it was kind of inspiring.’’
He remembers the day in 1980 when Lennon was shot. It was December 8 – a date that also happens to be Waters’ birthday, although due to the time difference, it was the morning of December 9 when he heard the news on his kitchen radio in Sydney. ‘‘I just heard ‘John Lennon shot’ and then I started paying attention and I thought, you know, ‘I hope he’s alright’…’’
Twenty minutes later, his death was confirmed.
‘‘Then it really it hit home in a way that – all violent deaths are horrible – but this one seemed to be robbing the world of something a bit special.
‘‘I think my way of expressing anything towards Lennon came out 12 years later in this show.’’
Australia has now been Waters home for nearly 40 years, but he made the decision to emigrate literally on a whim, making use of the government’s £10 scheme that gave Britons cheap passage, in exchange for a promised two-year stay.
‘‘So I thought ‘that’s a good deal, ten quid, and you can go halfway round the world’.’’
In Australia, he played in bands, before starting a stage career with the musical Hair, which soon expanded into screen roles He has 22 films and 43 television series or tele-movies to his name.
So what’s next? For now, he’ll continue touring Through a Glass Onion and then, who knows? Something will come up. Just don’t mention retirement.
‘‘That’s a word for people who live in another universe.’’
Lennon: Through A Glass Onion,
Auckland’s Civic Theatre, August 10-13. Book at Ticketmaster.