Review: JACK MAGGS at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 19th November 2024.

Closing the 2024 season, State Theatre is presenting Jack Maggs, adapted by South Australian playwright, Samuel Adamson, from Peter Carey’s novel. It is directed by the company’s former Artistic Director, Geordie Brookman. We see a Victorian group of players putting on a play, the story of deported criminal, Jack Maggs, and his return to London after a long term in Australia, which introduces a diverse collection of flawed individuals.

Ailsa Paterson’s set and costumes, with the lighting design of Nigel Levings, create this double layer by placing a proscenium arch for the Victorian theatre back beyond that of the modern theatre, and introducing an air of making do, with a patchwork curtain, well-worn costumes, and adding atmosphere through a very detailed lighting plot. Added to that is the evocative sound design, by Andrew Howard, and the music from composer, Hilary Kleinig, which has the cast engaging in some impressive vocal harmonies.

Carey took the convict, Abel Magwitch, from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations but, instead of Magwitch coming back to England to see how successfully Philip Pirrip, known to all as Pip, had succeeded in becoming a gentleman, Maggs has returned to find his adopted son, Henry Phipps, who has gone missing, shutting up his house and sacking his servants. While waiting for news, Maggs becomes a servant in the home of Percy Buckle, next door to the house previously occupied by Phipps.

Before anything else happens, however, the prominent prop on the open stage, with views into the wings, is a ghost light, behind which the cast warms up and gets into character in full view of the audience. A ghost light is a long-standing tradition, a single, bare bulb on a stand at centre stage, left alight when the theatre is unoccupied. It, obviously, has a safety aspect for the first people to enter the theatre and the last to leave but, according to superstition, all theatres claim to have ghosts, and it was once also believed that it provides light for them to act out their favourite roles when the theatre is closed. This play brings forth the ghosts of a Victorian tale, shadows of the past, conjured up by Brookman and his superb cast. The London fog rises, the cast don their costumes, Mercy Larkin numbers, titles, and introduces the first scene, in Brechtian style, and Maggs steps forward.

Mark Saturno plays Maggs, a man who was deported to Australia, pardoned, made his fortune turning clay soil into bricks, but is not permitted to return to England, where he feels that he belongs. Knowing the consequences if caught, he returned anyway, wanting to find Phipps, and with another agenda. Saturno gives a powerhouse performance, embracing the darkness of the character and exploring all of the emotional ups and downs in a richly complex performance.

Maggs interacts mostly with Tobias Oates who is a novelist seeking inspiration and who sees Maggs as a model for the central character in a novel that he plans to write. Having made a deal with Maggs, Oates uses mesmerism and magnets to extract his life story. James Smith plays Oates as a conniving, self-centred man, concerned only with fulfilling his own needs

Percy Buckle, once a grocer who has now gone up in the world, is played by Nathan O’Keefe, who gives a most energetic performance and injects frequent humour, lightening the narrative, in another of his fine performances.

Ahunim Abebe gives a marvellous performance as she takes on the important dual role of Mercy Larkin, a servant in Buckle’s household, and the narrator who claims ownership of the play. Rachel Burke plays Mary, the wife of Oates, and also plays the outrageous Henry Phipps, excelling in the two enormously different roles.

Jelena Nicdao, making her professional debut, plays Mary’s sister, Lizzie, who suffers at the hands of Oates. She is one to watch and I expect that we’ll be seeing much more of her. Dale March plays George Partridge, one of the footmen in Buckle’s employ, the other being recently deceased by his own hand, and now replaced by Maggs. March brings both optimism and sadness to his character in a nicely balanced performance.

Jacqy Philips plays Ma Britten whose concoctions ‘help’ women in trouble, Percy Buckle’s housekeeper, Mrs. Halfstairs and, in the final scene when the play within a play has ended and the Victorian actors are themselves again, she plays Mercy in her old age, explaining what happened to each of the characters beyond what we saw in the play. She is, as always, wonderful in all three roles.

This was a terrific end to the 2024 season, and to Mitchell Butel’s time as the Artistic Director of State Theatre. Be sure to get tickets to this world premiere of Jack Maggs.

Photography, Matt Byrne.