THE POWER OF TWO
One of Australian theatre’s most powerful duos is the third married couple to be honoured with the Australian Equity Lifetime Achievement Award.
It seems there is something very satisfying about the notion of “The Golden Couple”. It sees our admiration for singular achievement and raises it to the power of two.
John Bell and Anna Volska are the third married couple to be honoured with The Australian Equity Lifetime Achievement Award. First were musical theatre power couple, Jill Perryman and Kevan Johnston, then Julia Blake and her frequent on-screen partner, Terry Norris. The chemistry these acting teams display prove the adage that two’s very good company.
For American audiences of the last century, the anointed theatrical gilded duo were “The Lunts”. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were Broadway stars who appeared in hit plays, both classical and modern. They were followed by several generations of acting couples: the Oliviers, the Burton/Taylors, the Newman/Woodwards, and even the now dissolved “TomKat” and “Brangelina”!
In decades past, the pre-eminent Anglo-Australian theatrical couple was Googie Withers and John McCallum. She was glamorous, sparkling and mercurial. He was her stolid support and took very much a back-seat on stage, although his career as producer can’t be underestimated.
In Britain, blue plaques adorn many residences where the famous lived and breathed. The practice is to spread to Australia. I visit John and Anna in their NSW Central Coast idyll which has been their escape for almost 25 years. Who’s going to get top billing on the blue plaque? Both jump in to say, “It’s a partnership. Equal billing!” But Anna softly suggests that perhaps she is the John McCallum and John is the Googie Withers in their partnership.
“John is the prow of the ship”. Immediately, John chips in to insist that, in that case, “Anna is the engine room”.
And, the advantages of working as a theatrical double act? John insists, “It’s the shorthand. It would be hard being married to a nuclear scientist or a brain-surgeon. There’d be nothing to talk about over dinner!”. Anna adds, “When you’re working together in this profession, so much of yourself is revealed. And we don’t have to reveal it to each other because we already know.” John sums it up, “You can talk shop. You can discuss your problems and anxieties with someone who understands. And there’s so much to talk about. Let alone the gossip!”
On winning an Achievement Award, what would they consider their greatest achievement? “Staying together and hanging in there. And having two wonderful and very close daughters and family.” Hilary and Lucy Bell (a playwright and an actor respectively) are in the business and as critics of their work the proud parents admit to being, “a little biased. We like everything they do”.
And that love is reciprocated. Hilary explains, “I count my blessings daily for the childhood we had, and for the continuing relationship we have with our parents.”
The four of them are very close and speak daily. “Lucy and I still look to their example on everything that matters — how to raise children, how to treat people, how to deal with the ups and downs of an artist’s life. We turn to them as much for advice on growing passionfruit and making laundry detergent as on writer’s block and bad reviews.” But even if they were no use at all with such things, their daughters have always felt absolutely loved, “and what matters more than that?”
John had a supportive family himself. His mother asked to come to John’s production of David Williamson’s The Removalists. John had warned her that there was a lot of swearing, not to mention the violence and blood. Anna remembers that Mrs Bell was, “a country woman, [who] lived in Maitland, rather proper and pious.” John dutifully sat next to his mum but was dreading the violent punch-up with its blood all over the walls. The lights finally went down and she took her son’s hand and cooed, “Darling, that was lovely!”.
The auspicious partnership of John and Anna began when they both appeared in The Cherry Orchard at The Old Tote in 1963.
John was cast as a last-minute replacement for Dennis Olsen in the role of Trofimov. It was love at first sight and the young couple appeared in several more plays together, married, and packed up their young family to try their luck in the United Kingdom.
Touring the provinces with The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) was quite a grind with two children having to sleep in dresser draws in many a theatrical boarding house. To this day, long tours are one of the things John likes least about the business.
A chance meeting with director Richard Wherrett who, like so many of his cohort, had made the pilgrimage to London to find fame and fortune, proved propitious. It turned out that both were slightly disillusioned with the actuality of British theatre, especially the technique of the directors. The dreams that these young men shared were not in the West End but in their homeland.
So, a return was planned. In 1969 Robin Lovejoy, the artistic director of the Old Tote Theatre company, told a group of actors including long-time collaborator Drew Forsythe that John Bell and Anna Volska would be returning to Sydney after several years at the RSC and that that they would be working with the company.
Drew recalls, “Who, I thought? I had no idea at the time what a difference they would make, not only to my life, but to the life of theatre in Sydney. Fifty odd years later it seems fitting to honour them for their amazing contribution.”
Along with Ken Horler and Richard Wherrett, John began The Nimrod Theatre Company, which, like Christianity itself, was born in a tiny stable.
The relationship between Actors Equity and Nimrod was a momentous one. Common practice up until this time was that actors weren’t paid for the rehearsal period. John and Co. were the first to reverse this set-up and pay their casts from day one of rehearsals. John laughs, “Some of the actors were suspicious. They thought there must have been some kind of trick we were trying to play!”
John became the Hamlet, Prince Hal, Macbeth, Petruchio, and Lear of his generation and Anna appeared in many of the plays alongside him. Sydney Morning Herald critic, H.G Kippax described her as, “a distinctive comic and classical actor”. She also kept up a parallel career in television drama. She was a regular in the very successful continuing drama, The Godfathers, on Channel 9.
Anna would have to rush from the studio to get to the evening performances at the Nimrod. At one stage she was playing Isabella in Measure for Measure. The Nimrod couldn’t afford understudies, but Anna was so fearful of running late that she paid for an understudy out of her own pocket. “I remember one time racing from Channel 9 and ripping the costume off the poor woman who was about to go on in my place!”
The Shakespearean plays presented at Nimrod had a particular Australian flavour and were a success with critics and audiences alike. In 1990, John parlayed this success into a National Theatre Company of his own, Bell Shakespeare.
Peter Evans is now artistic director of the company. “With the establishment of Bell Shakespeare, John changed the shape of our industry for the better. Anna’s contribution on and off stage, should never be underestimated. They embody a culture of generosity, curiosity, enthusiasm and care.“
Though no longer head of Bell Shakespeare, John and Anna are fixtures at opening nights, and John is presenting a one-man show as part of its 2022 season.
John is quoted as saying he never plans to retire. “I don’t plan but there’s always a worry that someone will eventually tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘sorry, old fella. It’s time to get off’.”
Anna, on the other hand, has retired after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, “It’s moving very slowly but I don’t have that kind of intensity anymore. I channel that into looking after John.”
Lifetime Achievers John and Anna have chosen a beloved Shakespearian verse which could be used as an epitaph:-
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
David Mitchell is a graduate of UNSW’s Department of Drama, who spent his university years attending performances at Nimrod and The Old Tote. Since then, he has had a prolific career as writer (Dusty, Shout!) and television producer (Parkinson, This is Your Life). He has profiled every recipient of the Australian Equity Lifetime Achievement Award.
