Source : the age
There is a familiarity within the Australian creative scene that gives audiences a unique kinship with the actors who appear on our screens and stages. These are the faces we have grown up with, who we have aged with, and who we innately feel like — were we to run into them at the pub — we could share a beer with. It gives our home-grown productions a warm, fuzzy feeling because, not only do we recognise familiar streets, landmarks and cafes used as filming locations, but we feel an instant intimacy when recognisable faces appear. The pride is palpable.
Occasionally, a production comes along that is so successful in creating that feeling of familiarity you can’t help but smile when you watch it, even if the subject makes you cry or shift uncomfortably in your seat. And that, in a nutshell, is Dalliance.
The six-episode drama series charts the fallout from one big, life-changing event and the ways it radically upends a group of 60-something friends. Exploring everything from female friendship and the path to parenthood to sex, desire and ambition, it’s the latest endeavour from John and Dan Edwards, the father-and-son production duo behind Bump and The F Ward.
The series also marks a reunion for long-time friends and collaborators Heather Mitchell and Hugo Weaving, who star as would-be romantic interests, Dani and Billy. Their on-screen rapport is instant, but when you’ve shared stage and screen for over 40 years, that’s to be expected.
“I feel so blessed every time I get to work with him,” Mitchell says of her decades-long friend. “From when we first worked together … there’s always been a lot of laughter, a lot of fun and ease. It hasn’t changed, really, over the years. And that’s the thing about getting older. [With] people you’ve known for a long time, you sort of slot right back to where you were.”
The pair first met at the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1979, began working together at Sydney Theatre Company in 1982, and, most recently, shared the screen in Binge’s acclaimed multi-generational drama Love Me.
“I adore Heather,” says Weaving. “Working with her is being embraced. She has a capacity to care about others like no one else and I consider myself hugely lucky to get to play with her whenever we work together.”
Dalliance is a reunion for many of the cast, and remarkable in that most of them are in their 50s and 60s. Mitchell was most excited by the prospect of giving talented friends, such as Catherine McClements, an opportunity to expand their creative horizons. “I loved watching her play a character who’s sexy, funny and complex when she’s so often cast as brittle and tough.”
She also knew the perfect person for the role of Rose, Billy’s wife of 40 years, pleading with Home and Away producer Julie McGauran to release Georgie Parker, who has spent 16 years working on the soap, for Dalliance. “I’ve known Georgie Parker since we were in our 20s, and I think this role shows people the depth of her talent.”
By nature of the series’ time-jumping format, Weaving worked mostly with Mitchell and David Wenham, who plays Billy’s volatile younger brother, but relished the chance to connect with old friends. “Our read-through days were very special, all the cast together for two days. It was so lovely to catch up with everyone.” And like all great 21st-century friendships, Mitchell adds, the WhatsApp group is still going strong. “We’re constantly writing to each other on because we formed such a close relationship between all of us. It’s beautiful.”
For 68-year-old Mitchell, this was a project particularly close to her heart. Despite a career rich with experience (she won her second AACTA Award in February for The Narrow Road to the Deep North), this is her first time in the producer’s seat. She was quick to accept when John Edwards made the offer. “One of the beautiful things about being older is the challenges are less risky because you’ve got less to lose, if that makes sense.”
“And I have loved it,” she adds, pointing out that her age gave her the confidence to ask questions. “I haven’t beaten myself up if I don’t know something. I just say, ‘Can you help me with this?’ I’d go to the production manager and say, ‘I have no idea what this means.’ I think as I’m getting older, I ask for help more.”
Camaraderie played a pivotal role in not only the chemistry between the actors and behind the scenes – Mitchell’s husband of 34 years, Martin McGrath, is the show’s director of photography – but also in the writing room, where lived experience and a willingness to be vulnerable gave depth to each character’s journey.
“We talked a lot about sexuality,” says Mitchell. “Passion, love, sex. People who’ve been through cancer, how medication affects your sexuality, how desire changes for each person as they get older. Some people just do not want to be touched any more. Other people long for it desperately. For me personally, I’m probably saying too much … [but] I’m more sexually satisfied in my 60s than I ever have been. And I know what I want.
“We really wanted to explore both men and women and whatever gender, that there is no time limit to love and companionship and sex. And that sex is not the driving thing for everybody. That often people go online looking for very different things. And sometimes it is sex with no other attachments. And other times, someone is really looking for a true love. The past can turn up.
“So we talked at length about what is sexuality, and how is it perceived? And I would hope that for younger people, if any younger people watch this show, that they will also feel that life doesn’t stop. You don’t stop growing. You don’t stop living. You don’t stop wanting.”
Dalliance, and Mitchell’s own sharpened focus on life, touches on what psychologists call “socioemotional selectivity theory”. It argues that we shift our priorities and goals depending on how long we think we have left. Young people who see the future as long and open-ended prioritise knowledge and building their social network, while those further along in life, faced with their own mortality, grow more selective. They chase emotionally meaningful goals, avoid obvious risk, and prioritise close relationships over new connections.
“The older you get, you’re looking closer to the idea of death. More friends die around you, more things happen which you might feel will result in an ending,” reflects Mitchell. “Certainly within this show, we want to say, no one’s ready to end anything. These characters aren’t thinking of endings, they’re thinking of beginnings, like how do I want to live the rest of my life? How do I want to be with the people I love?”
Endings, as it happens, are fresh in Mitchell’s mind. She recently starred in black comedy The Fox, which would become one of the late Sam Neill’s final roles (though with Neill as the voice of a magpie, they didn’t actually share the screen). “Sam was a very, very dear friend of mine,” says Mitchell, who also paid tribute to Neill at the recent Logie Awards. “I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and my husband was a close friend of Sam’s. He’s directed me, I’ve acted with him, but our main relationship is a non-professional one – I actually went out with him when I was 22 – and I still feel his presence enormously.
“And there again, a man in his late 70s who was working and had jobs lined up. So much of his identity and his love was in his work, the people and the industry. I think it’s important for people to know, he was not a weakened person. He was strong right up until the end.”
As with Neill, both Mitchell and 66-year-old Weaving show no signs of slowing down. Weaving is in pre-production for, among other projects, the long-awaited Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2 and returns in season six of Slow Horses next month. Meanwhile, Mitchell is fresh off a 350-show run of her acclaimed one-woman play RBG: Of Many, One and is already lining up her next credits.
“People talk about being invisible in their 60s or as they get older; I feel the reverse,” she says. “Your 60s is a wonderful period of self-exploration in a whole new way, consolidating what’s important in life and what’s right for you.” If you ever run into her at the pub, she’ll tell you all about it.
Dalliance premieres on Paramount+ on August 27.
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