 |
WINNIPEG - Actress Kelli Fox has been hitting the dye bottle for so many years, she couldn't tell you if she was born a blonde, a brunette or a redhead.
The fortysomething star of Manitoba Theatre Centre's latest production does, however, have a good idea of what her natural hair hue is these days. And let's just say she's not about to start letting her roots show.
"Eight years ago I shaved my head for a play," Fox explains. "It all grew back in, and it was really grey and I thought, 'Oh no! I'm not ready for this yet!' I've been colouring it a lot since."
Southern Ontario's Fox -- the younger sister of actor Michael J. Fox -- will be able to express her love for various coif shades as The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead (along with four other characters) in Australian playwright Robert Hewett's one-woman show, on at MTC this month. Central to the dramedy is suburban redhead Rhonda Russell, who becomes vengeful after discovering her husband has been involved in an extramarital fling.
"I'm restricted about what I can talk about, according to the playwright and his contract with the theatre," says Fox, whose last local show was 1989's Frankenstein: Playing With Fire at MTC Warehouse. "But we're safe to say this revolves around an affair ... Rhonda's neighbour Lynette is the brunette. She's involved in the sense that she and Rhonda are very close friends and neighbours. The blonde in question is central to the affair. It's always about the blonde, eh?"
True, but said blonde probably won't be having much fun once Rhonda gets a hold of her. Word has it the housewife and mother breaks down in a shopping mall. Then, the play's six other characters get to tell their sides of the story.
Director Alisa Palmer "said she thinks of it as a Greek tragedy for the mall set," Fox says. "These are really average people with middle-class jobs and middle-class lives. They're my family and my neighbours; I know these people.
"Then one event suddenly turns everything upside down. It's interesting to watch average people try to cope with extraordinary circumstances."
Fox is also finding herself in the unusual -- and somewhat frightening -- situation of having to carry the show on her own. The theatre veteran -- a regular at Ontario's Shaw and Stratford Festivals who has played everyone from Trojan Women's Cassandra to a "big, dykey lesbian" in Winnipeg playwright Brian Drader's The Norbals -- says Hewett's nearly two-hour show is a workout.
"He's certainly pushing me to the limits of my versatility. He asks a lot out of the actress, and it's a massive challenge. Before I agreed to do this, that voice (in my head) was telling me, 'This scares the crap out of me,' which usually means I can do it."
After all, the play was made for a woman like Fox. Hewett has said he wrote the 2004 script for an actress friend who had complained about how hard it is for women to book lead roles over the age of 40. While Fox's dance card is full, she'd appreciate it if the theatre industry catered more to females who are fabulous at 40 and beyond.
"I hope it's turning around," she says. "I think for a long time, women had a hard time finding a place as writers and creators of theatre. As long as men were writing the plays, of course they were writing about themselves. The central characters were men and the female characters tended to be a sidebar or accessory. They're not as interesting, except when you look at a Shakespeare play, or with Ibsen or O'Neill. It's part of the reason why I spent so much time at the Shaw Festival.
"I think we're starting to figure out -- as times change, as baby boomer women are into their 50s and 60s -- the next generation behind that, we're going to see that women have a lot more potential in them past 45."
Even if theatre types don't start to see the silver lining in aging female thesps, Fox doesn't plan to start walking through all of the doors that being Michael J.'s sister can open for her. She appeared on the odd south-of-the-border TV show (21 Jump Street, The X Files) in the early '90s, but has otherwise avoided the Hollywood scene that her Back to the Future star brother still frequents, even as a Parkinson's sufferer.
"To be honest, moving into Michael's world has shown me enough of that kind of segment of the business to know that that's not where I want to spend my life. I find it deeply uncomfortable. I'm a Canadian; I like to work in Canada. I'm a theatre animal."