A Review of The Play Jasper Jones Based on Craig Silvey’s Novel

Jasper Jones is a contemporary Australian story that explores the life of a teenage boy who is attempting to grow up and learn that racism and death overshadow the community of his home town. Despite the dark themes of the play, the production goes against the book and keeps the performance light and quirky, completely avoiding direct confrontation of bigger issues. The producer of the play, Kate Mulvany, modified Jasper Jones from Craig Silvey’s novel. Mulvany points out the challenge of including the favourite parts of the novel as well as fitting the exploration of the town’s people into a stage adaption of a novel. However, Mulvany overcame these challenges and managed to produce her own adaption of the Australian classic. The play is a murder mystery in which Charlie Bucktin (played by James Smith), a bookworm with not many friends, helps Jasper Jones, a social outcast and rebel, hide evidence of a murdered girl. Jasper sets off to find the murderer so that the townspeople will not blame and punish him for the crime he did not commit. While keeping Jasper’s secret, Charlie continues on with his everyday life as normal, where he learns about his Vietnamese friend Jeffery’s family problems and his owns parent’s marital troubles all while trying to figure out his own love life.

This leaves room for four different story lines to develop throughout the course of the play and unfortunately the director does not find the balance of the storylines. The whole aspect of the murder mystery is often put aside as Charlie becomes so swept up in other events that he does not seem to care about the murdered girl that haunts his dreams. The outcome of this is Charlie not having time to connect with the bigger issues of the town’s negative take on Jasper with racism. And hence the town’s darkest secrets and thoughts are never fully met. However, this does not stop the play from being enjoyed. The storylines include a youthful and imaginative tone that results in laughter from the audience. The story of Charlie’s best friend, Jeffery Lu (played by Roy Phung), is both beautiful and heartbreaking, as Phung makes all of his scenes captivating with his ability to balance both humour and heartache, he swallows his hurt and buries it in his humour and sarcastic ways as he tells Charlie about his family’s deaths in Vietnam.

The set consisted of an embankment of frames at the back of the stage with old pillar like gum trees with the bark peeling like papery death scattered over the top of the uneven forest like ground. There were single set pieces, such as a door or the window and the bed of Charlie’s bedroom, that were brought onto the stage which helped with a simple yet effective use of changing the location. The set also assisted the actors onstage with clean and easy exits with the hole under the forest ground in the embankment, which added to the unsettling experience of when Charlie and Jasper throw Laura’s body into the lake. The purpose of this was to help make the set creative and practical.

The director of the play, Nescha Jelk, uses the scene changes to her advantage by turning them into a dream sequence; in which Jasper’s dead girlfriend Laura haunts Charlie as the stage is reset to create the next part to the play. Not letting a single moment go to waste, Jelk uses each and every moment to its best ability and creates a play that moves smoothly and efficiently between the scenes while keeping the dark undertones in play. Much like Charlie’s mother who leads a double life while still keeping her dark and menacing personality despite what happens to her and her family in the town full of secrets and lies. But, like life, the moments of children playing in the sun as kids gradually slip away as more serious issues come to a head. Charlie and Jeffery soon learn that while adulthood will carry an escape from the small humiliations and alienation of childhood and their youth, it brings new kinds of pain and joy for the childish teenagers. Through the course of the play, however, Nescha Jelk makes it clear that for Jasper Jones, neither a safely sheltered childhood or the self-determination of adulthood will ever be available for the rebellious teenager.