Hugo Weaving, That Eye, The Sky

n.  Hugo Weaving ~ That Eye, The Sky

Theatre 1994: Burning House Theatre 
Henry ~ self-loathing, self-doubting, Born Again epileptic drifter
Cast/Dir: David Wenham   Ort, Rachel Szalay  Alice, Hugo Weaving Henry Warburton, Susan Prior  Tegwyn,  Steve Rodgers Fat Cherry 
Dir: Richard Roxburgh
Wri: Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo from Tim Winton's novel
Theatre: The Burning House at the Old Sandstone Church, Darlinghurst, Sydney Arts Festival January - February 1994

Hugo Weaving: That Eye, The Sky.  Plot/Comments:

Based on the book by Tim Winton, That Eye, the Sky examines family, faith, hope and sexuality, as seen through the eyes of Ort, an innocent twelve year old boy on the brink of adolescence, isolated physically by his small outback house, and socially by his ex-hippy white-trash family status. 
     When his father is reduced to a vegetable after a car crash, Ort's emotional distance from others becomes ever greater as his family struggles to cope.

Sent to help, seemingly from nowhere, Henry Warburton (Hugo Weaving) arrives ~ a physically imposing drifter, last seen by Ort talking to himself while naked in the woods.
    Warburton ~ a charismatic, burnt-out hippy turned Born Again drifter ~ changes the family forever: he believes that he has been sent to save their souls and heal Ort's father, thereby saving himself. But as the family (with the exception of Ort's cynical and sexually precocious sister) bring him and God further into their lives, Henry becomes more hopeless, the floodgates of deep-rooted desperation and self-hatred weighing him down more with each passing day.

Winton writes sensitively, touching on religious belief (and hypocrisy), teenage and adult sexuality, voyeurism (not just of the sexual kind), epilepsy, clinical depression, disability and family bonds.

Although I've yet to find the playscript for this production, it is obvious from the book that it would have been an incredibly intense play.    The story is completely character-driven: very little happens beyond Ort's first person observations of his changing family; nearly all the plot is set in their shabby home and each character changes dramatically as the plot slowly unfolds.
Hugo Weaving 2000 Beard

Next: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Next Play: Arcadia 
Previous Play: The Taming of the Shrew 
Back: Frauds
Classic Scene
Web Weaving

Typical Hugo Weaving Character Quotes:

  • "Her name was Bobo Sax…she wasn't nice. She had the looks of a man and she smelt like a Labrador…she used to lie in her mud hut in the dark... the smell of her…"
  • [To himself] "I hide and you see. I run and you follow. To the ends of this earth, to the limits of the pit of myself, you will see me and know me." See Classic Scenes for the rest
  • "I'm weak…you don't like weak men"                                                       Alice "All men are weak"
  • "I've got my own surviving to do"                                                         Alice: "It's not survival we worry about, Henry.It'shealing"                                          "Isn't it the same thing?...Death is a healing too, you know"


Comments

  • Hugo Weaving has been on medication for epilepsy since the age of 13. In a recent interview he spoke of the terrifying moment before each fit as feeling like possibly his "last few seconds on Earth" but "things that happen to you which are most awful are often the things you learn most from." This is the only time he has explicitly played an epileptic.
  • This play, the first Burning House production, was a massive (and surprise) hit at the Sydney Arts Festival in early 1994. It was also peformed later in the year for the Melbourne Arts Festival with the same cast, minus Hugo Weaving, who was then  unavailable (director Richard Roxburgh played the Weaving part). 
  • Another stuttering part, Warburton often makes a "Ngtth" sound (see Russian Doll, Priscilla,The Interview )
  • David Wenham also worked with Hugo Weaving in Russian Doll, The Lord of  the Rings and After the Deluge. Steve Rodgers was also in The Blind Giant is Dancing. See The Usual Suspects for a huge list of regular Weaving co-workers.

 
 
 

 

This would have been a fantastic part for Hugo Weaving. Even though he seems to have chosen a path of specialising in self-loathing, self-doubting characters, Warburton (along with Allen Fitzgerald in The Blind Giant is Dancing ) has to be one of the most extreme examples of this. 
     It must have been an exceptionally difficult and draining part for him to play, not least because of the demands of portraying severe epilepsy (see biography for details). The most powerful scene for Weaving in the play was likely to be Henry's crisis of faith speech, leading to his mental/emotional/theological breakdown and epileptic fit ~ see Classic Scenes for details.

Hugo Weaving content: 


Hugo Weaving plays Henry Warburton:  a man without hope, free-falling in desperation, doubt and self-loathing, hopelessly trying to redeem himself.
After rejecting his middle class upbringing, the young Warburton was rejected and disowned by his Anglican minister father at his mother's funeral. 
Hugo Weaving, That Eye The Sky 2

An epileptic drifter, his life was changed by a five day (literally) blinding headache which eventually revealed God's Plan for him. Soon after, Warburton became trapped in an intense,  addictive, animalistic affair with a Bobo Sax, a woman he found physically and emotionally repugnant.  Against his deeply-felt religious convictions, he fell increasingly under her power; becoming enslaved to her memory when she died on him mid-coitus, ensuring that he would never be free from her guilt or his self-disgust at his own sexuality.

The more Ort's family come to depend on him, the more it becomes clear that he is using them for his own last attempt at redemption: Henry becomes negligent in his (over) care of Ort's family and begins to repeatedly let them down, pushing them away as the fear of personal and moral failure eats into him.

Henry talks to God but God never answers back. 
He is unworthy, weak, a liar, a sinner. A failure.