Sex for sale: Greg Stone and Guy Simon. Photo: Stephen Wilson Barker.
It is a rare play that is both entertainingly funny yet also has such serious things to say. But Arrernte playwright Declan Furber Gillick’s Jacky, a snappy 140 minutes, certainly delivers.
Jacky, played by Guy Simon, is a smart and enterprising young blackfella who has made a life for himself in Melbourne. He’s saving for an apartment, gets on well with Linda (Mandy McElhinney), who runs a community support organisation and who found him his first job, in an Irish pub. Linda is trying to expand her program to include urban Indigenous people so when she offers Jacky a salaried contract as a kind of intern, it seems the perfect fit for both of them. Jacky’s chasing the (white) Australian dream of owning his own place so now he can apply for a mortgage.
What Linda doesn’t know is that sex work is what is what is paying Jacky’s bills and augmenting his savings, but he has everything under control. He ‘sets his own hours, sets his own rates’. He’s his own boss. He also has a regular client Glenn (wonderfully played by Greg Stone), so all is going really well. Until Jacky’s wayward little brother comes down from the ‘mish’ and starts wreaking havoc. Keith (Danny Howard), who’s been sent down south by his mob to sort himself out, doesn’t buy into Jacky’s metro lifestyle, is averse to working for the man, keeping his brother’s flat tidy and paying any rent. A clash of cultures? You bet. As far as Keith’s concerned his bro is selling out. But there’s also the challenge of where does Jacky think he belongs.
Very soon, Jacky’s various lives in the white world threaten to come undone.
There are four superb performances here. Simon excels as Jacky – polite, unassuming, capable – but so too does Stone. Their first meeting is excruciatingly brilliant as a nervous Glenn struggles to say what he wants from Jacky. Their ‘relationship’ – what Jacky calls their ‘exchange’ – begins promisingly enough.
McElhinney’s Linda seems altruistic and grounded, a good foil for the other three. Except her enterprise needs money and her sponsors tend to be from big mining companies (just a piece of info the playwright lets slip. No discussion required.)
Meanwhile, Howard’s exceedingly ebullient and increasingly angry Keith is an accident waiting to happen. Another clever aspect of this play is that it’s easy to see both sides – and also that none of the four characters is totally honest and upfront.
Jacky is just about keeping Keith out of trouble, he’s doing ‘cultural performances’ for Linda’s sponsors, and keeping his ‘exchange’ with Glenn rolling along. Until one day Glenn says something so shocking that it takes everyone – Jacky and the audience – by surprise. It is all the more shocking, because unexpected. Here it’s racist with loud echoes of colonialism (but in male/female exchange you’d call it shockingly misogynistic, too).
Director Mark Wilson (who oversaw the successful Melbourne season) increases the tension as the play glides to its final scenes, by which time Furber Gillick, without ever being didactic, has mined the racism – conscious and unconscious – of Australia. There are no neat answers here, but it’s such a thought-provoking play, clever and funny, confronting and sad all at once. It’s not on for long, only until 2 February, so catch it if you can.
Tickets: $41-$97
https://belvoir.com.au/productions/jacky/
