From comedy to a time of catastrophe

The third play by Michael Galvin also features Antonia Prebble (left), Ilona Rodgers (right) and Mark Ruka. Photo / Supplied

Best known as Dr Chris Warner on Shortland Street, it's been 10 years since Michael Galvin hung up his stethoscope to appear on stage - but he's relaxed about returning to theatre because he knows the writer of his new play so well.

Galvin wrote and stars in Station to Station, playing a charismatic television presenter turned religious zealot. He acknowledges he created the part for himself, allowing him to demonstrate his versatility, but stresses it's not a hero role.

"Writing yourself the hero role is a little bit self-aggrandising even for an actor," he says. "If you write a part with yourself in mind, you owe it to yourself, I think, to make it the most unsympathetic character."

So Galvin plays Simon, an alluring extremist who, with his beautiful sidekick, persuades a vulnerable mother and her soldier son to journey from suburban New Zealand to Jerusalem - and into a devastating act of terrorism.

Galvin, a lapsed Catholic, says his third play explores our need for certainty in an uncertain world and asks why we believe in things we know really aren't true. As far as he is concerned, faith and religion are the ideal hooks upon which to hang those thorny questions.

He wants Station to Station to examine the place faith occupies in our lives in an original and stimulating way but says despite its big themes there is still comedy amid the catastrophe.

"The stuff I like best has a serious intent but with a very strong sense of humour. It seems the more serious the drama, the more extreme the comedy. They are right back against one another."

The themes, style and subtext found in Station to Station attracted what Galvin describes as the "prestige cast" of Antonia Prebble, Ilona Rodgers and Mark Ruka, and director Cameron Rhodes.

Rodgers says she signed up because it is a home-grown work which is intellectual but accessible and dares to confront important issues without overly moralising.

"I honestly do not think we do enough stuff like this in Auckland," she says. "I find I have to go to Sydney when I want to see something serious and meaningful like this."

Rhodes says he is enjoying the challenge of getting to grips with the play's many layers and translating this into heartfelt performances from the four-strong cast.

"Ultimately, it's the actors who take the words from the script and create the play.

"Given that this is a new play, it's great to have the writer in the room because Michael contributes - in a good way - by offering insights into the themes and what's going on with the characters and can 'tweak' the dialogue accordingly if necessary. He's very good at splitting his roles as writer and cast member and getting on with it."

Rhodes and Galvin have been friends since the early 1980s but surprisingly haven't worked together since they appeared in a youth theatre production in 1983.

"I remember having a coffee with Michael in 1992 and he said he was moving to Auckland because he had a role in this television thing called Shortland Street," Rhodes says. "Of course, none of us knew what it was going to be like or lead to."

Apart from a break in the late90s, Galvin has been playing Dr Warner for so long, it's easy to forget the Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School graduate has a successful theatrical background and another life as an award-winning playwright and short-story author.

In 2007 he won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, handed out to outstanding emerging New Zealand playwrights, and joined an impressive list of past winners including Briar Grace Smith, David Geary and Toa Fraser.

His first play, New Gold Dream, was a comedy about the reunion of a once famous performance art group obsessed with80s music. Auckland Theatre Company staged a workshop production at the inaugural Auckland arts festival in 2003 but it was Galvin's second play, The Ocean Star, produced by ATC in 2006, which marked him as a writer to watch.

"My wife has asked when am I going to write a play where everyone in it is not hysterical - which might be a good point," says Galvin. "I suppose what all my plays have in common is that they take people on the edge of a crisis that forces them into taking extraordinary action.

"I find it funny the ways in which we lie to ourselves about ourselves, the self-deception which operates on so many levels."

He suspects his work is getting more serious in intent and the themes are becoming broader. His fourth and most recent work seems to indicate this. Called War Hero, it is based on the horrific World War I experiences of conscientious objector Archibald Baxter, the father of poet James K. Baxter.

The play was commissioned from Galvin as part of winning the Bruce Mason Award and had its first public performance, a reading, on Anzac Day.

What: Station to Station
Where and when: Herald Theatre, July 1-11