Judith Lucy always wanted to be a serious stage actor — and she's finally about to realise that dream in a new production of Happy Days at Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), which opens in May.
"It's only taken me until 55, but better late than never," the comedian tells ABC Arts over Zoom, during a break from rehearsals.
"If you had told nine- to about 20-year-old me that I was going to be the lead in an MTC production, I would have lost my mind … [But] I don't think I could have done it before being in my 50s."
While Lucy has had screen roles in movies including lawn bowls comedy Crackerjack and Peter Helliar's sitcom How to Stay Married, she's never performed in a professional play before.
Instead, she has carved out a 35-year career as a stand-up comedian, collecting accolades at the Helpmann Awards and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival along the way.
Then, at the end of 2022, she quit stand-up, after she realised during one of Melbourne's lockdowns that she wasn't happy.
In the final episode of her ABC podcast Overwhelmed and Living (a sequel to 2020's Overwhelmed and Dying), she explained: "I've been stuck in a loop and I'm finally done with the constant anxiety, the self-medicating and the grind of touring.
"I've lurched from one job, gig, show to the next and I just don't want to live like that anymore."
She tells ABC Arts: "I don't want to stop performing. I just really want to stop writing jokes and touring all the time."
Now, Lucy returns to the stage in Irish playwright Samuel Beckett's 1961 absurdist classic, Happy Days.
She plays Winnie, a relentlessly chatty 50-something woman sinking deeper and deeper into a pile of dirt throughout the play, with only her withdrawn husband Willie for company.
It was Happy Days director Petra Kalive, who was associate director at MTC from 2020 to 2022, who initially reached out to Lucy about the role.
She had seen her perform live, and had enjoyed her ABC series (Judith Lucy Is All Woman; Judith Lucy's Spiritual Journey) and podcasts.
"I thought the actor playing Winnie had to have a natural gift for comedy, being able to find a dry wit and humorous turn of phrase in the bleakest of moments, and something in my gut told me that Judith had the capacity to do that," says Kalive.
"I was just so flattered-" Lucy begins, before pulling a folded handkerchief out of her top. "Oh, I've realised that I've still got a prop on me."
She continues: "I was just so flattered that someone was actually asking me to be the lead in a bloody Melbourne Theatre Company production."
Upon re-reading the play she decided she wanted to take on the part: "There was something about the character I felt on a gut level. I thought, 'I think I can do this.'
"I was attracted to the idea that it was very much for a woman in her 50s.
"[And] I was attracted to the idea that even though it was written in 1961, a lot of it does seem really relevant, especially this hideous, dystopian world that they're living in, with the sun blazing down all the time. There was the whole climate change element of it that really appealed to me."
Drawing on her family
Later, Lucy recognised what was really pulling her towards the role: the similarities between Winnie and her late mother, Ann; and between Winnie and Willie's relationship, and that of her parents.
Lucy explains: "They would have been born around about the same time as Beckett. They were Irish. Winnie seems quite religious, especially in the first act. My mother was very religious; Dad was not. Mum was the one that was like a sort of demented bird; Dad was the quiet one."
Happy Days is not the first time Lucy has found inspiration in her family.
In 2008 she published The Lucy Family Alphabet, a memoir about her childhood and finding out she was adopted at age 25. Her third memoir, Turns Out, I'm Fine (2021), is about having an existential crisis at 49.
In one chapter, she unpacks how her parents' relationship shaped her disastrous love life, and describes how her late father "lived like a less attractive Don Draper. He smoked, drank, fucked around and essentially did what he liked".
She writes: "My parents fought often because of the love Ann Lucy so desperately wanted from her husband … I can only assume that my father felt that being the wage-earner and keeping up home repairs should've made it obvious he cared."
Lucy's understanding of their dynamic has informed her portrayal of Winnie.
She says: "I certainly grew up in a household where the man absolutely wore the pants and wasn't there a lot of the time. Yet his presence was enormous. The whole household just revolved around dad.
"In that same way, I think Winnie's entire existence absolutely revolves around Willie and how he is interacting with her."
But drawing on her memories of her mum to bring Winnie to life hasn't been easy.
"I feel very sad that mum was this frustrated woman who wasn't allowed to work — and I think in an ideal world wouldn't have even married and had kids," says Lucy.
"To be honest with you, I will probably be a bit sad about mum's life till the day I die. And in some ways, it's sort of nice to still have her very close to me still, even though she's been dead for 20 years."
Lucy says she always wanted her parents to divorce, but she reflects: "Not long before they died, it became clear that they did love each other. And I think that was there all the time."
She sees that same underlying affection in Winnie and Willie: "I actually do think there is this little sliver of optimism that's ultimately about love and human connection [in this play].
"I think underneath all of this shit, they [Winnie and Willie] kind of love each other."
Theatre to comedy and back again
Lucy first read Happy Days while studying theatre arts at Curtin University, in her hometown of Perth, where she was involved in 17 plays over two years, both on and off stage.
Her love of theatre led her to drop out of Curtin to save up the money to move to Melbourne, where she hoped to study at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA).
But when she got to Melbourne at the age of 20, she gravitated towards the comedy world.
"The first time I walked into The Last Laugh in Melbourne, it blew my tiny mind," she says.
She recalls seeing a who's who of 80s Australian comedy at the venue, including The Found Objects (an earlier iteration of Lano and Woodley), drag king act The Natural Normans (Denise Scott, Lynda Gibson, Lynne McGranger and Sally-Anne Upton), Greg Fleet and Gina Riley.
"It was this incredible melting pot of talent. As this little girl from Perth, I was pretty blown away by all of it," says Lucy.
When she wasn't accepted into VCA, she decided to give stand-up a go.
"When I got rejected, instead of taking it as a negative, I just thought, 'I think this means I should be doing comedy.' It never occurred to me that I should maybe not perform, like it might have with some normal people," says Lucy.
"The one thing about acting that I had reservations about was the whole idea of auditioning and waiting for the phone to ring … It was very obvious that these people [in comedy rooms] were creating their own work, and they were writing their own material."
But she soon discovered how solitary writing stand-up can be, with hours spent alone at a desk crafting the perfect joke, well before you set foot on stage.
Even though she has since collaborated on comedy shows — including with Denise Scott on Disappointments and its follow-up All New Disappointments — working in theatre has been totally different.
Lucy lists all the people in the rehearsal room for Happy Days – from co-star Hayden Spencer and director Petra Kalive to set and costume designer Eugyeene Teh and composer and sound designer J. David Franzke.
"This is much more of a team effort [than stand-up]. I love that. I must admit I haven't really experienced it to this extent," says Lucy.
Her comedy experience does come in handy.
"I won't be freaked out about performing in a big room to hopefully large audiences, because that is something I've been doing for a while," she says.
"[Also] there are funny bits in the play and hopefully my experience as a comedian will help me to wring out every little last drop of laughter that I can.
"At the end of the day, we're putting on a show, and you're there to entertain people. And I am a big believer in never losing sight of that."
That's not to say that Lucy isn't nervous about taking on the role of Winnie – but she thinks that's perfectly understandable.
"If I was just really kicking back and feeling incredibly relaxed about being the lead in a Melbourne Theatre Company production — and particularly in such an iconic part — I think maybe there would be something wrong with me," she says.
"While the anxiety is a pain in the arse, I think I'd be a psychopath possibly if I wasn't feeling anxious."
Happy Days runs from May 1 to June 10 at Melbourne Theatre Company.
