Kiwi legend returns home as booze-swilling granny
Lisa Harrow has played opposite Dame Judi Dench and starred alongside Sam Neill (the father of her son). Now one of New Zealand’s most-prodigious actors has returned home to make her Wellington stage debut.
The 74-year-old actress has swapped the below-zero winters of her Vermont home for the sunny days of Wellington to take on the role of a chain-smoking, boozeswilling grandmother attending her daughter’s funeral in At the Wake. Written by award-winning playwright Victor Rodger (writer of Black Faggot, and a storyliner for Shortland Street, as well as an actor and former journalist), Wake will debut in Wellington this week.
Harrow plays grandmother Joan alongside Marco Alosio and Jerome Leota. Joan attends her daughter’s wake, armed with a $300 bottle of Johnnie Walker, and though delighted to see gay grandson Robert (Alosio), she becomes ferocious when his estranged Samoan father, Tofi (Leota), turns up to pay his respects. Nobody is safe as Joan unleashes hell.
The story was inspired by Rodger’s family, when he wondered what might happen if his Scottish grandmother were to be in the same room as his father. Harrow, who came across the play in 2014, said she was delighted to come home to act in a show with such an ‘‘extraordinary writer’’.
‘‘My real love is the kind of language on the stage,’’ Harrow said. ‘‘His [Rodger’s] writing is right up there with the Greeks and Shakespeare.’’
Harrow said the play’s Auckland 2014 premiere marked the first time she had acted in a Samoan storyline. ‘‘I hopped at the chance,’’ she said.
‘‘It opened a door to me of such fun and pleasure. [ Its Auckland premiere] was absolutely extraordinary – the first audience was primarily Pasifika.’’
Harrow said it had been an eyeopener to see how many original Kiwi stories were making their way to the stage.
‘‘So much theatre is being done by people who are creating their own shows,’’ she said.
‘‘The idea that you create your own show just didn’t enter my head all the way through drama school. When I went to RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts], it was assumed that someone else wrote the story.
‘‘It was a very much traditional way of going about it.’’
Harrow divides her time between Vermont and Auckland, where her son Tim Neil Harrow lives with his family. She met Tim’s father Sam on set of The Omen III, the 1981 film in which Harrow played journalist Kate Reynolds and became a love interest of Damien Thorn (played by Neill) – the Antichrist and the son of the Devil.
She said it was a weird film and the stunts took forever to do, but by the end of the filming, she was offered one of the horses that she had ridden on. She said she had to decline the horse because she lived in central London.
Harrow also starred opposite Neill in the mini series Jessica, based on the novel by the late Australian writer Bryce Courtenay. Following At The Wake‘s run at Circa, Harrow said she would wait on a call about a proposed film, but couldn’t confirm any details.
Though she splits her time between television, film and theatre, Harrow said her heart still lies on stage. She realised that dream as a 25-year-old playing Olivia in the Twelfth Night in 1969 at the Royal Shakespeare Company opposite Dame Judi playing Viola. ❚ At the Wake premieres tonight at Circa Theatre One. The season runs until March 31.