Australian Oscar winner has no intention of being a tall poppy

By GILBERT WONG arts editor

Watching Geoffrey Rush wet his pants on stage is a disconcerting experience. He can be an actor of such gravitas that it is as if one of Dame Kiri's boobs accidentally flopped out of her opera gown mid-aria.

As fluid dribbles down his leg and darkens his shorts, it's a definite show-stopping moment.

Rush's "accident" is entirely within character. He's playing Clint, one of a group of 5-year-olds facing up to their first days at school in the play The Small Poppies, undeniably the theatre highlight at the just-finished Melbourne arts festival, largely because of Rush's undeniable star power following his Oscar-winning performance in Shine in 1997.

Fellow Australian actors Mel Gibson and the adopted Russell Crowe might have the marquee value, but it is Rush who holds the aces when it comes to acting cred.

The play is a revival and Rush and his fellow cast members had flown in from the Dublin theatre festival where it had gone down a treat.

As director of the Magpie Theatre for Young People in Adelaide in the 80s, he commissioned playwright David Holman to write The Small Poppies.

As Magpie's director, he tried to shed the earnestness that accompanies kids' theatre. When asked if he finds a lot of children's theatre demeaning, his eyes roll a little and he says, "There's a lot of adult theatre that is demeaning."

The Small Poppies is a play about the politics of the playground in a multicultural primary school. We watch as cliques form, as bullies exercise power; all watched over by teachers who do their best to deal with half-formed minds and emotions.

In a press conference, Rush talks about how parenthood - he has a 5 and a 7-year-old - changed how he approached the play. "Between 5 and 8 you are dealing with an age group who are at their most adorable and at the peak of their sensory capabilities - there's a playing and a curiosity gene at work that as adults you can only be in awe of. It's just great to be around; I love it."

He found fatherhood to be a liberating experience, refreshing how he regarded acting as he watched their sudden emotional shifts and their ability to always be in the "now."

In Dublin, audiences brought children who perched on cushions in front of the stage, as transfixed as their parents. In Melbourne, Rush's appearance made the play one of the festival's hot tickets. Rush says he was a little disappointed that more children were not able to come.

Both his children have seen the play performed, and the harshest of critics have given their dad the thumbs up, though they didn't necessarily identify with Clint, the kid who keeps running away because he finds it hard to make new friends.

The Small Poppies has a universal quality, he says, though one that applies in particular to an antipodean childhood. Audiences respond with self-recognition at the stream of poo jokes, sudden emotional shifts and the innocent songs and games of childhood.

For him it has been a welcome return to the stage.

Since Shine Rush's film career has been most noticeable for roles in the period dramas Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love. Though he also took roles in a couple of schlocky films, Mystery Men and The House on Haunted Hill that went quickly to the ghetto of video. In all he has made nine films since Shine, including the upcoming Quills, where he plays the Marquis de Sade.

Last year the Wall Street Journal felt bound to pass judgment on his career post-Oscar: noting that he hadn't moved to LA (remaining instead with his family in suburban Melbourne), and commenting on his choice of smaller roles and his general failure to seize the "business moment."

He deliberately remained in Melbourne's eastern suburbs with his wife, actor Jane Menelaus, and their children. Rush clearly does not want to be a celebrity. To questions about his private life, he can be frosty. He "commutes" to his jobs in Britain and the United States.

Rush explained his decision in a Melbourne Age article: "I've come to terms with the fact that I live 'out of town.' The sort of work that is likely to come my way is not going to happen by me schmoozing my way around LA.

"Everything I've done apart from Mystery Men, which was a big-budget flick, has been through the arty back-wings of the building, and shot in Europe. On an executive level they're probably going, 'Get him, he wears tights'."

He has no intention of seeing his life played out in the glossy mags. And it was on stage, his first and finest home, that Rush the actor rather than movie star showed what he can do.

* Gilbert Wong attended the Melbourne Arts Festival as a recipient of the Australian Government's Cultural Award Scheme.