Cosi: After Berner.

Cosi open at the QPAC Concert Hall on February 4.

While his stage work may be unfamiliar to a new generation of Brisbane audiences, long-time theatregoers are welcoming the return of one of Queensland’s most multitalented artists in La Boite and QPAC’s production of Cosi.

In recent years Adam Couper has been best known behind the scenes, as head writer of the ABC TV’s biting satire, Backberner (which ended last year). He had also been a regular panellist on Good News Week.

But before that he was a fixture on the local theatre scene here, seemingly inexhaustibly bouncing between Theatresports (as a champion international player), stand-up comedy at the Sit Down Comedy Club, acting, writing and creating music.

Now, at 40, the prodigal son has returned home “for the foreseeable future”, undertaking his first role onstage since 1996.

Cosi, for those unfamiliar with Louis Nowra’s hit comedy (directed here by the original production’s director, Sydneysider Adam Cook), chronicles the efforts of a psychiatric institution’s patients to stage a production of Mozart’s opera Cosi Fan Tutte.

While the journey and results are often hilarious, Cosi carefully avoids making a joke of mental illness.

“It’s a play about all these obstacles to the dream of putting on the opera. Nobody can sing, the musician (played by Adam) is permanently bombed on lithium or some other substance.

“It’s a wonderful story of triumph over the odds but in saying that it’s a matter of what that triumph actually is. If they put on an opera that was staged brilliantly it wouldn’t be as good a story. They achieve to the degree that it’s good for them, there are a lot of minor personal triumphs,” Adam explains.

The role of Zac, a schizophrenic piano accordionist, allows Adam to draw on both his acting and musical skills, but also his experience with depression. He agrees that “a lot of funny people have a dark side.”

“I don’t want to speak for all funny people but in general the funniest people I know do have some very dark aspects, because you don’t appreciate peace without war and light without dark and sorrow – I wish it were another way.”

However, Adam is keen to dispel the image of the tormented artist suffering for his art. “The depression I had, I don’t want it to be that people see that that was kind of a dark brooding artist depression; it’s a problem a lot of people have and I don’t want to romanticise it.

“The problem with society is that if somebody thinks I’m depressed or have problems, they think they’re alone when in reality a lot of people out there have been through the same kind of thing to be a valid support network, for it to be less stigmatised.”

While some rock stars have turned it into an art form, in Zac’s case being heavily medicated and making music don’t mix.

“Essentially once the decision has been made to put Cosi on in the asylum and he’s going to be relied on to be the musician it’s made clear very quickly that he’s so doped up to the eyeballs his musically competency in question.”

However, although Zac might have a defined psychiatric illness, in some ways he’s not that different from a lot of the population; whether or not it be identified as such, self-medicating, by alcohol or drugs, is pretty common.

“Zac tends to raid the pharmacy on a regular basis, he doesn’t like reality,” Adam admits. “He likes to be in limbo or a drug induced hazy dream.”

After three weeks of rehearsals, Adam has found the experience positive both personally and professionally.

“I turned up at day one’s rehearsal wondering what would happen but it’s like riding a bike. I’ve been away from stage acting but I’ve been immersed in the whole creative process, so it’s just putting on a multitude of hats. I am enjoying it.

“Brisbane has been extremely welcoming, people are happy to see you back, it’s been encouraging. It doesn’t feel like a backward step, mainly because I’m a very different person from when left five, six years ago; the changes to both me and Brisbane make it a whole different experience. I’d like to think I’m older and wiser.”

Part of that warm embrace involves a commission from his erstwhile Toadshow collaborator, La Boite artistic director Sean Mee, to write a play (the subject of which is still under wraps) for the 2004 season.

Being Brisbane-based certainly isn’t curtailing Adam’s involvement in the national arena though.

He’s keeping his comic writing talents sharp, contributing via email to Comedy Inc, a new show premiering on Channel 9 mid February. “It’s much less intense” than his five-day a week job at Backberner was, he notes. “It’s straight sketch comedy, so it’s not quite the same pressure to be as clever.”

Following Cosi Adam will appear in and compose the music for the QTC/State Theatre Company of South Australia’s co-production of Moliere’s Scapin.

Oh, and he’s finishing a book which he declares has been far too long in coming. Talk about being back with a vengeance.