In 2023, Anne Edmonds starred in her first professional stage production at Melbourne Theatre Company. Over six or so weeks of rehearsal she got to know the theatre intimately – its staff, its quirks and personality. Now, just over two years later, comes Edmonds’ new comedy set in, er, a Melbourne theatre company.
Bit of a coincidence there, Anne?
“I know,” says Edmonds. “It might be my last ever theatre production. I did Bloom, which was written by Tom Gleisner, a musical that I absolutely loved. It was a real career highlight. I loved the ensemble, I loved everything about it. So I spent all this time in the theatre building, and I just couldn’t help but be like, ‘This is just ready to go.’
“There’s always a new production, and there’s the wardrobe department, the wig department, the admin. So unfortunately, I was like, ‘Oh noooo, I’m gonna have to delve in here.’”
The result is Bad Company, Edmonds’ sharp six-part workplace comedy set at the (fictional) struggling Argyle Theatre in Melbourne. Edmonds plays the theatre’s artistic director Margie Argyle, who is convinced of her greatness, consumed with jealousy over the success of her superstar sister and is running the Argyle into financial ruin, one avant-garde production at a time.
“Margie’s based on a lot of people I know in showbiz,” says Edmonds. “All coming together in one deluded form, myself included.”
Making Bad Company didn’t come easy for Edmonds, though. Unlike the over-confident Margie, Edmonds had to push through self-doubt to get the show made. Even though her stand-up career was thriving, she had made a TV series before (The Edge of the Bush) and was working regularly on TV, Edmonds’ dream of writing another TV show was floundering.
“I had a few heartbreaks, I must say, with Helen Bidou in particular,” says Edmonds of the character that became a cult hit after appearing on the breakfast TV satire Get Krack!n.
“That character was so popular with people, and online, and I wrote a TV series about her, and then I wrote a movie, and I just couldn’t get her going, which for me was really confusing, with the [public] response to her versus the network saying no.
“And often it was stuff like hinting that my profile wasn’t high enough. It’s fascinating to see how decisions are made sometimes, because then you’ll get a random actor who’s decided to make a comedy and they go, ‘Yeah, he can do it’ and it’s like ‘Why?’
“So I have been waiting a long time, and I had given up and not in a bitter way at all – I’d had my daughter and I’d tried so many times – and I thought I’ll just let it go. I put Helen Bidou to bed, and just went, ‘Oh, well, stand-up comedy is amazing, I love being on stage, I’ll just do that’, and it wasn’t like a bitter and twisted decision, it was, ‘Oh, you had a go at that.’”
She was persuaded to give it another shot by comedy titan Kevin Whyte, who came to see her while she was “dragging myself” through Bloom while breastfeeding her daughter. “I did, sort of begrudgingly, admit to him, ‘Well, I have got an idea about this theatre’.”
And so Bad Company was born. It was written while Edmonds was “riding a two-year-old wave”, working by herself at 4am then filming for about five weeks at the Substation arts space in Melbourne’s inner west, and then deep in the edit.
“From the first kind of group scene onwards, I was like, ‘Oh, this is something a little bit mad, you know, this is a little bit magical,’” she says. “That was probably the biggest thrill of it, because it went from off the page to each of the ensemble members embodying it.”
For anyone who works in the arts, much of Bad Company will have the uncomfortable ring of truth. There’s a French peasant play that requires tonnes of sand, another one simply titled Despair, the push-pull of commercial vs artistic success and more puffed sleeves than a Renaissance fair.
“That’s one of the battles theatres have themselves,” says Edmonds. “Is that line between their usual audience who they’re used to dealing with, which is highly educated, often wealthy, elderly white people, and wanting to have fun, or make productions that are entertaining. That’s a genuine kind of thing that they have to grapple with as well.”
It’s not a million miles from what Utopia did for government departments or what Fisk did for suburban law firms – it’s affectionate needling at the quirks specific to those workplaces, without hammering them to death.
“I love the theatre,” says Edmonds. “And I love the theatre community. And I was very conscious of that when I was making it. I mean, it’s a comedy, right? So you have to make fun of stuff. But my intention is, by the end of it, for people to love this theatre company and the people in it.”
One thing that has been genuine for Edmonds is the support she received from her co-star Kitty Flanagan, who plays Julia, the uptight suited and bespectacled CEO of the Argyle who is attempting to save the theatre from ruin.
Edmonds and Flanagan are perfect foils for one another – Edmonds the loose unit to Flanagan’s more uptight schtick – but Edmonds was still nervous about asking Flanagan to join.
“She’s a hero of mine,” says Edmonds. “And I feel like this show wouldn’t exist without Fisk because Fisk has been evidence of a jokes-driven sitcom [working], people going, ‘Yes, finally, let’s laugh.’”
Flanagan was an instant yes (another Fisk connection is that Bad Company is directed by Tom Peterson, who helmed Fisk for its three seasons), and gave Edmonds the confidence to back herself throughout production.
“She was really helpful,” says Edmonds, who won the AACTA award last year for her stand-up special Why Is My Bag All Wet. “Because she’s done it all, she was basically just trying to give me the confidence to do it, and that I’m the comedian, I’ve got the actual expertise, even though it will feel not like that at a lot of points, other people will give you the idea that they’ve got the expertise.
“She backed me, really. I think there’s a lot of performative feminism these days, but that’s, to me, that’s a proper feminist move, ‘I’ll back you right in here to make something.’”
Like Edmonds, Flanagan struggled for years to get her own show off the ground, and Edmonds hopes there’s now less reticence about giving women, particularly proven performers, their own shows.
“I would say globally it’s a bit of a movement, which is fantastic,” says Edmonds. “There’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus and there’s Olivia Colman, who is a massive hero of mine. People want to see people like us, we want to see ourselves. But on the other hand, it’s sad that women have to wait that long. Why did Kitty have to wait that long to make a show when she’d proven herself as a stand-up comedian for so many years?
“I’d still like it if younger women got a chance as well, that you didn’t have to wait until you were nearly 50 and exhausted.”
Well, they do say if you want a job done, give it to a busy person …
“Yeah, great,” she says, laughing. “Wait until I’ve got a two-year-old. Perfect. Thanks. I had all those years leading up to that where I could have had hours on my hands, you know? No, no, I’ll do it when there’s a two-year-old around.”
Bad Company screens at 8.15pm on Sundays on the ABC and streams on ABC iview.
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