Part scrubber, part goddess, part imp.” Geoffrey Rush is describing actress Emily Barclay. “A bit goth, a bit Minnie Mouse – a true player.”
She doesn’t really look like either today, when we meet at Sydney’s Shangri-La hotel. She doesn’t look like the terrifying Katrina in Suburban Mayhem, the petulant teenager in Belvoir’s Gethsemane, the harried young mother in Lou, the cornflake-and-vodka-munching Masha in Belvoir’s The Seagull or the buttoned-up Cecily in Melbourne Theatre Company’s The Importance of Being Earnest opposite the venerable Mr Rush.
Instead the 27-year-old, with long dark auburn hair and wearing a velvet dress with black ankle books, looks like the girl you’d most enjoy having a laugh with. And indeed we’re giggling at the incongruity of conducting our interview in the hotel’s executive lounge, while overseas businessmen finish their power breakfasts and flick through The Financial Times.
Barclay is staying at the hotel during the Sydney Opera House’s run of This is Our Youth. While accommodation at the luxurious hotel is a perk of starring opposite Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin, for the moment it’s home for Barclay, who is now officially based in London, rather than Sydney or her home town of Auckland. “I think in the last year I’ve been back in London for four days and I’m here for another four months,” she laughs, “but I’m doing Three Sisters there in July at the Young Vic. Benedict [Andrews] is directing it, so it will be really nice to spend some time there.”
She has spent the last month in New York, rehearsing This is Our Youth. It was her first time in the metropolis and she was determined to drink it all in, staying in the East Village, visiting the Met, MoMA and the American Folk Art Museum and catching both The Book of Mormon and Death of a Salesman, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, “one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen on stage”. She confesses she’d like to live there one day. “I have friends who have lived there for a couple of years and still walk down the same streets and discover something new. It feels like that sort of place.”
But for now, she’s back on the Belvoir boards in Simon Stone’s adaptation of Strange Interlude. It’s hard to believe her first stage role was in 2009 in Belvoir’s Gethsemane, such is the regard for her in the theatre world. In fact, it was only after he saw Barclay in The Seagull that Stone decided to attempt Eugene O’Neil’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. “The play requires an actress who can believably express a myriad of states over the course of 25 years in the character’s life,” says the director, “and Emily truly has a unique ability to navigate the widest of emotional and physical spectrums.”
It’s billed as one of the greatest female roles ever, but Barclay’s trying not to think about it like that. “It’s a gift, a role like that.” She cringes. “God, that sounds like the most embarrassing thing to say – but it is. He’s one of those writers where he comes out with something and you just want to read it over again, it’s so exquisite.”
Barclay has been highly successful in her film work, picking up an AFI best actress award for Suburban Mayhem and New Zealand Screen Award for best actor and British Independent Film Award for most promising newcomer for her role in In My Father’s Den.
“Emily truly has a unique ability
to navigate the widest of
emotional and physical spectrums.”
But she believes in the importance of theatre. “I experienced it when I went to Death of a Salesman. I came out of the play and I felt that it really meant something to me. That’s the goal of it, isn’t it? To deliver theatre and to feel that meant something to me. I saw myself up there or I saw someone I knew or I related to that experience, those feelings, and I think that’s an important thing. It makes you feel like you are not alone.”
Published in Vogue Australia June 2012
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