Nicholas Denton and Shaka Cook in Queensland Theatre’s Jasper Jones. Photo by David Kelly.
Queensland Theatre’s energetic production of the bestselling Australian novel of the same name, is playful, inventive and engaging, but ultimately struggles to find the balance between a coming-of-age drama and a dark gothic commentary on 1960s Australiana.
Set in a broody summer in 1965, the play opens with Charlie Bucktin, the story’s hero, being awoken by neighbourhood bad boy, Jasper Jones. Jones leads the bookish fourteen-year-old to a moonlight clearing, where the dead body of teenage Laura Wishart swings from a tree, an apparent murder victim. Convinced he will be accused of the crime, Jones persuades Bucktin to help drag the body to a swamp, then swears him to secrecy. While the death is investigated around him, and the boys’ pact gradually unravels, Charlie attempts to carry on life as normal, playing cricket with his best friend and wooing Laura’s younger sister.
Melanie Zanetti and Nicholas Denton in Queensland Theatre’s Jasper Jones. Photo by David Kelly.
Sam Strong’s production transports the audience into a world reminiscent of Mark Twain and Harper Lee, with a distinctively Australian undertone. The direction creates a cinematic sense of movement as the characters’ weave through a revolving set of weatherboard and tin houses. Evocative lighting and sound design recreate a realistic 1960s rural Australian landscape, where life revolves around suffocating parochialism and cricket.
This coming of age story is played by a uniformly excellent cast, with strong ensemble work, that plays with the light comedic pitch, as well as the darker undertones. Shaka Cook’s haunted Jasper Jones, is maturely observed. Nicholas Denton’s (Charlie Bucktin) physicality is particularly striking, embodying the gawky struggle of adolescence and its multiple contradictions. Jeffrey Lu (Hoa Xuande) is the hapless son of Vietnamese immigrants, and inhabits the role with considerable charm and pathos. Bucktin’s mother, who self-medicates with alcohol after the still-birth of Charlie’s sister, is played with moving and compassionate understatement by Rachel Gordon.
Nicholas Denton and Melanie Zanetti in Queensland Theatre’s Jasper Jones. Photo by David Kelly.
While this production has many commendable features, and is in many ways justifying of the standing ovation given by its opening night audience, the darker undertones of racial and sexual violence that lie at the heart of Craig Slivey’s novel are not fully realised. Where Huckleberry Finn refines a moral message and To Kill a Mockingbird passionately takes aim at the racial injustice of Southern culture, Kate Mulvey’s adaptation looks away at the last moment, preferring to comfort rather than confront the audience with the repercussions of the dark violence of parochial small town Australia. The culminating scene where the mystery is solved, and the secrets resolved (no spoilers here) are undermined by melodrama and exposition rather than a final moral and emotional denouement. The story’s punch misses its mark, the moment of realisation, the loss of innocence, and the transition into the borderlands of adulthood is only fleetingly encountered and we are left with only a lightweight moral.
Fans of the book will no-doubt delight in the way this production captures the spirit of the story, as well as the characterisation and performances, however. While the dark issues at the heart of the play are not fully explored, the numerous attributes of this production meant that received rapturous opening night approval from the Brisbane audience.
Rating: 4 ½ stars ★★★★☆
Jasper Jones
Queensland Theatre
Based on the novel by Craig Silvey
Adapted by Kate Mulvany
Directed by Sam Strong
Designer Anna Cordingley
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Composer/ Sound Designer Darrin Verhagen
Cast Includes: Ian Bliss, Shaka Cook, Nicholas Denton, Rachel Gordon, Hayden Spencer, Hoa Xuande and Melanie Zanetti
28 July – 18 August
Playhouse, QPAC
