It was 2016, and Michelle Brasier’s career was starting to ramp up. She had appeared on stage and television as part of various comedy acts, both in Australia and overseas, and had performed her first one-woman musical comedy show at Edinburgh Fringe. “I was really stressed – I was being asked to do a lot of things by a lot of people, and I was like, ‘Oh god, I just want to disappear,’” Brasier tells Broadsheet.
She messaged her friend Tim Lancaster, a fellow performer, saying, “‘I just want to crawl into a fort for a little while.’ We talked about what that perfect fort would be – it involved sheets and fairy lights, lots of cushions and specific foods, the whole shebang.”
After months of being just friends, lots of chats and being cast together in shows (and even in a domestic violence ad), they finally went on a date. Pizza and a movie at Lancaster’s house, and he’d even made that perfect fort. “I had to put nails in the wall to keep the sheets up – I don’t think I got my bond back, but we’re still together, it was worth it,” Lancaster says.
The fort chat sums up an important aspect of their relationship – Brasier getting stressed; Lancaster, who now performs in her live shows, supporting her in just the right way. “Sometimes Tim will take me for a walk around the block like I’m a staffy with too much energy, or he’ll run the bath and bring in a cup of tea – he’s really good at knowing what I need.”
“Because of Michelle’s drive, her restlessness, her always looking forward to what’s next, she forgets to look after herself,” Lancaster says.
Part of that drive comes from the fact that both Brasier’s father and brother died of cancer, and she has been told she had a 97 per cent chance of developing it. “I can go into a panic if things aren’t happening fast enough,” she says. Earlier this year, after an Australian, UK and Ireland tour, her show Average Bear – which is centred around Brasier’s hereditary disposition – had an off-Broadway and LA run. It was the first time the couple had performed live in the States. “I’m ticking off all my childhood dreams, which I think I’ve only been able to do because of the drive that comes from that feeling of running out of time.”
Another recent achievement was the book My Brother’s Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag, which Brasier wrote whenever she had the chance: “at a cafe in Edinburgh, in our Airbnb in Croatia, in the car at Christmas time driving back to Wagga – Tim at the wheel, me typing on my laptop – in the bath, in far north Queensland where there was no internet.” It lurches from the hilarious to the heartbreaking. “I wanted it to feel like a tarot reading, that you could open it up to anywhere and be, like, ‘Okay, this is just the chapter I need today.’”
When they’re not touring together, or performing separately, Brasier and Lancaster hang out at home in Hawthorn with their five-year-old black labrador Eva, a retired guide dog ambassador who failed training partly because she was too friendly, which was “perfect for us”, says Lancaster. As well as going for walks and cooking, they’re into watching movies with the dog on the couch – anything from Paddington 2 to “really nice arthouse films”.
The couple first met when they were cast together in a production of Legally Blonde The Musical in Braiser’s hometown of Wagga Wagga, NSW, soon after her brother died. She played Elle Woods and he played Warner Huntington III, who dumps her at the start of the show every night. “Not the strongest start to a relationship,” Lancaster jokes.
Doing the musical in Wagga and subsequent jobs together “really set up our working relationship, so it wasn’t like having to adjust to your partner in a different mode. Because we met at work, it’s just always been a part of our relationship – it’s not separate from life,” Brasier says. “We like each other when we’re working, which is, I think, when you’re at your worst.”
It made sense then, they both say, to collaborate on the live shows. “We have two very separate skill sets that come together really nicely,” Lancaster says. Brasier usually writes the shows, asking Lancaster for his opinion along the way. “And he’ll give me a joke that’s better than ones I’ve written, which is annoying.” She’ll also write the songs, but leaves it to Lancaster, a multi-instrumentalist, to “make them sound good”. As far as being onstage together, Lancaster improvises, takes on multiple characters, sings and plays guitar or piano, but, says Brasier, he “prefers the light spill to the spotlight”.
“At the start of my career, I would have loved to be the leading man, but it wasn’t until Michelle and I started working together that I realised how nice it can be just to be a good solid backbone, but still a very important part of the show. It’s quite a tough skill to get the balance right – to do enough without doing too much,” says Lancaster. “Not many people can do it,” Brasier says. “I couldn’t.”
Hanging out together with an audience comes as naturally as hanging out together at home, she says. “We have this thing before we go on stage where we look each other in the eyes and say, ‘Shut the fuck up and have fun … and don’t take it too seriously.’”
See Brasier, accompanied by Lancaster, in her new show, It’s a Shame We Won’t Be Friends Next Year, at Adelaide Fringe, and Canberra and Perth Comedy Festivals. Plus, her book My Brother’s Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag is out now through Ultimo Press.
