At Home with Paul Capsis

Paul Capsis in Angela's Kitchen.

By Elissa Blake

“Look out for that, it’s nasty,” says actor Paul Capsis, pointing at a tangle of thorns jutting from a small pot in his Surry Hills backyard. It looks like living barbed wire. “It’s some kind of cactus, I got it from my Greek granny. If it nips you it feels like an electric shock.”

Capsis steps cat-like through crowded pots of succulents and overgrown elephant ears (“I must chop those”), stopping to point out each plant. “That’s a lavender, I found it growing wild in Randwick and I picked a tiny bit off, now it’s huge. My Greek granny used to steal cuttings from people’s front gardens and I always felt so guilty. But now I’m doing it, too.”

He laughs, then points at a sad-looking lemon tree. “That’s a symbol of my Greek-Maltese culture. But as you can see, it’s not doing very well,” he says.

“Over there is a frangipani. It’s incredibly special because it was a gift from Robert Menzies. He is my all time favourite Australian actor - Robert and Judy Davis.”

Capsis, 48, is an unlikely gardener. His compact garden is his haven, a place of quiet after evenings spent in the spotlight. He pauses to inspect his collection of succulents, bending to stroke a fleshy nub of leaves. “I love a succulent. I love their independence; they’re not needy and they don’t need a parent,” he says. “I’m a terrible parent. I can’t even keep a cat. I’m on the road all the time.”

Capsis is theatre royalty - an actor, singer and cabaret star - in possession of a voice that stretches elastically from the raspy howl of Janis Joplin to the torchy tones of Nina Simone and the pained blues of Billie Holiday. He has been a long-time muse to theatre director Barrie Kosky, working in dark, dreamlike roles from The Lost Echo (STC, 2006) to Boulevard Delirium, which played in Vienna and Australia in 2005, earning him a Helpmann Award.

Wendy Hughes and Capsis in All About My Mother, 2010.

Capsis in Boulevard Delirium, 2005

Capsis in The Threepenny Opera, 2011.

More recently he played Riff Raff in Gale Edwards production of The Rocky Horror Show (2008-9), Agrado, a transsexual drag queen in All About My Mother (MTC, 2010) and two roles in The Threepenny Opera (STC, 2011), Jenny the prostitute and a vile archbishop.

“I loved playing the sleazy priest, he was my favourite,” he says. “I’ve played a lot of women. I’ve always been androgynous or that middle gender, somehow between a man and a woman. Now I really want the challenge of playing more men.”

But first he will reprise his most personal female role. He plays his beloved Maltese grandmother Angela, the woman who raised him, in Griffin Theatre’s revival of Angela’s Kitchen. It is an autobiographical play, co-written by director Julian Meyrick, where Capsis plays almost every member of his family unravelling a migrant tale that starts in bomb-shattered Malta and ends in working class Surry Hills.

A framed photo of Paul and Angela sits on his dining table. It was taken in 2005 in her backyard, two years before she passed away. The pair are smiling and hugging in front of a Hills Hoist draped with washing. “We both look really happy to be photographed together,” Capsis says, holding the frame. “I spent hours listening to her stories. She was earthy and a realist; the most selfless person I have ever met.”

Capsis is Surry Hills through and through. He was born in the Crown Street Women’s Hospital, and was raised in Angela’s terrace house in Landsdowne Street. He’s lived in his current home, just three blocks away from Angela’s place, for 14 years.

Over that time, he’s watched the suburb slowly gentrify.

“It still has a village feel but it has lost something,” he says. “When I was growing up Surry Hills was very rough and poor, and very multicultural. Now it’s become fashionable. Hip. There are people with trim beards and just the right tattoo. It doesn’t seem as friendly.”

When Angela passed, he kept a few small mementos: the crochet blanket she kept on her knees to watch TV, her glasses, photos and postcards. “If I was Andy Warhol, I would have kept absolutely everything. All her furniture and her clothes,” he says. “But you have to let go. I keep her energy and her spirit.”

Capsis makes vanilla tea in his tiny but immaculate kitchen, saying he doesn’t cook much. “Chops and veggies mostly,” he says. Although he does own Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion and can make her pea and ham soup. “That’s the only dish I’m proud of,” he says.

He shows me around his compact home, constantly apologising for “the mess”, which I cannot see. Apart from a few books lying around, it’s incredibly tidy. The walls are painted a dazzling white and light pours in from the skylight.

Upstairs, a bookshelf is stuffed with biographies of actors, singers and theatre makers. An enormous collection of vinyl records is on the floor. “I’m a collector,” he says. “You know how some people collect teapots or dragons? I collect Janis Joplin. I could go on eBay and just go mad. I have all her albums on vinyl, DVDs, films, I’ve got it all.”

Next to the records is an old red leather suitcase. It’s the one Angela carried from Malta. “That is so precious,” he says. Behind that is a rack of costumes, mostly black, some with sequins. He’s just donated a collection of original costumes, some from early collaborations with Kosky, to the Arts Centre in Melbourne. The archivist took him into the basement to show him costumes by Kylie Minogue, Reg Livermore, Peter Allen and Nick Cave’s diaries.

“My eyes were popping out of my head,” he says. “One day I’ll give them my scrapbooks and programs and posters, too. As an artist it’s hard to feel like all these shows are really real. Theatre is so ephemeral and transient and you can easily fall in and out of favour. So you have to keep memories.”

Downstairs, a 1940s bakelite telephone breaks the silence. It’s his mum. He speaks to her quickly, promising to call her back, before settling on a sunflower-coloured couch in front of a ridiculously huge television. “I went a bit bananas with the TV,” he says guiltily. “I’m really bad at maths. I wanted a 50-inch screen but they didn’t have any – thank God! – so I got this 46-inch screen and it’s still way too big. But it’s good for watching black and white movies on SBS.”

His favourite TV viewing is Monday night’s Q&A with Tony Jones and the occasional travel documentary. “I adore watching shows about the wilds of India or the mountains of Peru with people nearly falling off a cliff,” he says, confessing he also has a soft spot for super scout Bear Grylls (“He’s the real deal”).

Capsis works more in Melbourne than Sydney these days, but Surry Hills remains his home. “I admire places where multiculturalism is very alive. Like London or India. I believe people can get on, there’s room for everybody,” he says. “It’s the same in theatre. We don’t need one type of director or just one type of star. There is room for everyone, and the more diverse it is, the more interesting we are.”

Angela’s Kitchen plays at Griffin Theatre May 17-June 9, before commencing a regional tour. See griffintheatre.com.au for full details.

This story was first published in Sydney's Sun-Herald on May 20, 2012.