By Julie Huffer
9 Februray 2003
Music revs up the cast of The Shape Of Things.
THE SYDNEY Theatre Company's production The Shape Of Things begins and ends with loud music while being punctuated by groovy tunes throughout.
It's fitting, then, to find the cast of Neil LaBute's comic, upbeat, thought-provoking drama is making a lot of noise backstage as a CD player pulses with the rhythms of Eminem.
Brendan Cowell (who plays Adam) owns about 500 CDs and he brings in different ones every day. Eminem is the new favourite.
``And it's just as well I like it," make-up artist Helen Thatcher said, busily creating a sexy, organised mess with countless bobby pins in actress Alyssa McClelland's fine blonde curls.
The music is helping to psyche the actors up for the emotionally charged two hours they will enact shortly, but there's also a sense that they are calming themselves before the storm.
Cowell, who undergoes a huge physical and psychological make-over in this play, is taking time out to read letters, looking fresh despite a late night after yesterday's show.
``I can't sleep for about five hours afterwards," he revealed, describing his final gut-wrenching scene as ``the most amazing adrenalin rush".
The one who sets his heart racing and stomach churning (on stage, that is), actor Leeanna Walsman, enters in a fluster, shaking her gorgeous Shirley Temple-like curls and checking her make-up bag for an eyelash curler.
Elsewhere, fellow actor Nick Flint is not doing push-ups today, but says he often pumps his muscles backstage (after all, he is cast as good-looking Phillip), before making sure he's got the Midwest American accent right.
``It's really hard getting the accent, because I sound like a yobbo most of the time," he said.
With 15 minutes to curtain up, we are shooed out of the dressing room. Let the show begin.