Directed by Benjamin Henson for Auckland Theatre Company, RED SPEEDO is on at ASB Waterfront Theatre from October 31st, 2017. / AucklandTheatreCo
If he could take a pill - a single shot - to be a better actor, would he?
When director Benjamin Henson put that question to Ryan Carter, the initial reply was "yes", especially if everyone he was acting alongside took one. But then the ethical conundrums started to surface.
Is it fair? Is it really that easy? What are the longer-term ramifications? Is it cheating?
When you're starring in a play about performance-enhancing drugs, you can't help but find yourself thinking about how far you'd go to be the best. If Henson and his cast do their job right, the play Red Speedo will have all who see it asking themselves the same question.
Written by American writer Lucas Hnath - dubbed by the New York Times "one of the brightest new voices of his generation" - Red Speedo is set somewhere in middle America where lean, mean swimming machine Ray (Carter) looks a dead cert to become one of the greatest swimmers of his generation.
Then performance-enhancing drugs are discovered in the team locker room and he's implicated in a possible career-ending scandal. Enter ex-girlfriend and disgraced sports therapist Lydia, played by Chelsie Preston-Crayford, and the waters get murkier.
Chelsie Preston-Crayford. Photo / Dean O'Gorman
Red Speedo is Auckland Theatre Company's first play of its 2017/18 25th anniversary season and, say Henson and Carter, really nothing to do with swimming. The sport is simply the backdrop to a story more concerned with exploring naked ambition, the nature of competition and how corrosive they can be.
Henson says Hnath's punchy and punctuated script reminds him of playwrights Harold Pinter and David Mamet, and Carter, who's appeared on Shortland Street and in Power Rangers, says the script was compelling enough to bring him home from Sydney.
"Everything - but when I first saw the title Red Speedo, I thought it was a kid's pantomime then I started reading and thought, 'holy crap! There's nothing for kids in this'. The character is amazing, the story is awesome and the dialogue is so challenging that this will be really rewarding."
Carter doesn't even mind that he has to spend the entire play wearing nothing but a pair of red speedos. He says that given Ray has a shoulder to buttock serpent tattoo snaking round his body, it doesn't feel as little of a costume as it could.
Ryan Carter, in costume. Photo / Doug Sherring
"I feel like that snake is almost a total cover up and I can use it like part of the costume but it's not the most comfortable costume," he says. "It's okay when I'm standing up and moving around but if I have to lie down, then I think, 'this would be fine if I were in trackies', but I'm a bony boy and I feel every minute of the floor against me."
He'll have to spend a couple of hours every two-three days having the tattoo reapplied but that's neither here nor there, given the weeks of preparation that have gone into getting his physique and psyche ready.
It's meant a fairly restricted high-protein diet, daily gym work-outs and regular swimming. Even though we don't actually see Ray swim, Carter figured it was something he could do to get "inside" the character's head.
Describing himself as an average swimmer before rehearsals started, he's says he's now a competent swimmer who finds the lengths relaxing; a good way to chill out. That the water can be so soothing is one reason Henson didn't want a pool to be part of the set as it was during the play's New York premiere.
Instead, Henson has the cast positioned on the edge of a pool -- the edge of a precipice -- to heighten the "tangible danger" of the piece. It is, he says, no bells, whistles or box of doves staging; everything focuses on the script and the actors, who also include Wesley Dowdell and Scott Wills.
"It's not like Ray does any swimming and I thought a pool and water could be a huge distraction, taking away from what the play is trying to do," he says.
Henson says it's a play for the "Netflix generation" who like punchy, accessible thrillers with a lick of humour.
