Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), May 1, 2002 p055
Bloody bully boy. (Arts & entertainment)

Byline: ALISON BARCLAY

David Wenham can be brutal for his art, says ALISON BARCLAY

DAVID Wenham pulls back his cuffs. His wrists are spattered with dried blood -- his own, not the theatrical scarlet that spurts out of a pod. He looks at his wounds glumly.

``I'll be glad to say goodbye to him,'' he says of the guy who got him into this mess.

Another five weeks and Wenham will be free of Lee -- possibly the most repellent character he has ever shuffled in the shoes of.

In television's SeaChange, Wenham's Diver Dan was the tawny-haired free spirit many of us would like to be -- or be with.

As the drunken loser in Sam Shepard's tale of two brothers, True West, he is the bully we all want to avoid. In the course of the MTC production, Lee drinks dry a fridge of beer and Jim Beam, smashes his brother's typewriter, holds the car keys hostage and brandishes a copy of Hustler (which is probably why Wenham warns me, with a cryptic stare, not to sit in the front row). ``It's rather full-on,'' he says.

One week into True West's run, Wenham looks wrung out.

``Having opened the play now, I'm not looking forward to going back into that territory again for a long time,'' he says.

``Intense would be a fair word for it. It is full-on, gut-wrenching theatre. It is very violent, physically and psychologically.''

David Tredinnick, who plays Lee's young writer brother Austin, ``is on the receiving end of some pretty vile stuff''.

Within minutes of meeting, Lee has Austin on his knees in a headlock. It doesn't stop there. But to inflict such damage, Wenham has to suspend his own horror. ``In terms of stage violence I far prefer to be on the receiving end than be the person who deals it out, because you do have an enormous responsibility,'' he says. ``I'm wearing cuts and bruises here . . . but I think it's important to go through, to explore these characters and to perform these pieces. It is certainly challenging for the performers and the audience and I love theatre that has an energy about it.''

First produced in 1980 in San Francisco, True West is one of several Shepard plays inspired by his own miserable upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic father. It reminds Wenham of the Australian play The Boys, which he performed in the mid '90s and which also explores male violence.

He has just finished work on a new British film, Pure, in which he plays the drug-dealing boyfriend of a junkie mother.

``I would certainly love to do a ridiculous comedy, to be given the freedom to do something absolutely ridiculous, which in many ways is closer to what I essentially am, anyway,'' he smiles.

Wenham nominally lives in Sydney, but what with filming Pure in London and the huge Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand, he has hardly seen his home town in two years. His companion at the moment is Peter Carey's collection of stories about Sydney.

``But mostly my prime reading is newspapers,'' he says.

``I'm a person who is obsessed with the news. I watch very little television. The only television I watch is news programs. I'm just a person who is very, very interested in what is happening.''

He was not always that way. ``I was the archetypal very naughty kid in the class who spent more time outside the classroom. That's why the lessons slipped by. When I graduated from drama school and I found myself doing shows with Neil Armfield and amazing actors -- Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett, (Richard) Roxburgh, Max Cullen, Peter Carroll -- often I was very intimidated by their knowledge.

``It was that more than anything that inspired me to want to know more about so many more things.''

True West, Victorian Arts Centre until June 1. Bookings: 13 61 66. Tickets: $38.50-$45.40.

David Wenham fact box

Born: 1966, Sydney.

Trained: Theatre Nepean, University of Western Sydney, BA in Performance, 1987.

TV roles include: A Country Practice, GP, Blue Heelers, Simone de Beauvoir's Babies, SeaChange.

Films include: Cosi (1996), The Boys (1997), Molokai, The Father Damien Story (1999), Better Than Sex (2000), Moulin Rouge (2001), The Bank (2001), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003),

Theatre roles include: Hamlet (for the MTC), The Tempest, The Boys, That Eye The Sky, Cosi.

Awards: AFI Award, best actor, Simone de Beauvoir's Babies; Logie, best actor, SeaChange; Variety Award for film, 2000; AFI nominations for Better Than Sex, The Boys, The Bank, SeaChange.