2024: Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson

 

 

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson, based on the novel of the same name by Peter Carey, after Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
State Theatre Company South Australia at Canberra Theatre Centre, Playhouse.  December 5-7 2024.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
December 5


Writer: Samuel Adamson    Director: Geordie Brookman

Cast
Jack Maggs: Mark Saturno;             Tobias Oates: James Smith
Mercy Larkin: Ahunim Abebe;         Hawthorne/Mary/Phipps: Rachel Burke
Constable/George/Partridge: Dale March;     Miss Mott/Lizzie: Jelena Nicdao
Percy Buckle/Dr Grieves: Nathan O'keefe
Ma Britten/Mrs Halfstairs/Old Mercy: Jacqy Phillips

Creatives
Designer: Ailsa Paterson; Lighting Designer: Nigel Levings
Composer: Hilary Kleinig; Sound Designer: Andrew Howard
Accent Coach: Jennifer Innes; Assistant Director: Annabel Matheson
Intimacy/Fight Choreographer: Ruth Fallon

Mark Saturno as Jack Maggs
State Theatre South Australia

Though I know Great Expectations from my teenage reading – most fascinated by the hero ‘Pip’, his hope of marrying Estelle, and the character of Miss Havisham, ‘a rich and grim lady…who led a life of seclusion’ – I never thought much about Abel Magwitch, alias ‘Provis’, ‘an escaped convict’.  

Now, watching Samuel Adamson’s in many ways quite remarkable play, I find it is unfortunate that I haven’t yet read Peter Carey’s story of the life of Magwitch, alias ‘Jack Maggs’, convicted of theft and sent to New South Wales ‘for the term of his natural life’.  

So here I am, watching a theatrical interpretation of a fiction twice removed.  As Jack Maggs arrives secretly back in London, is he the same character as the Magwitch I knew?  If you want the answer, you couldn’t do better than start at Chapter XL – the beginning of the third stage of Pip’s expectations – on Page 3ll where he tells Pip his real name, but they agree to use an assumed name ‘Provis’ and to call him Pip’s uncle.

Confused already?  In Great Expectations there are 38 characters, listed before you begin to read.   In Jack Maggs, the play, there are only 16 characters played by 8 actors, seemingly covering something like a new version of Chapters 36-42 of Great Expectations – except that there’s no Tobias Oates, 'mesmerist', or any of the others in Dickens’ story.  Perhaps I shouldn’t ever have read or have had Great Expectations in the first place – even though Carey’s Tobias Oates insists that reading the literary canon is essential!

On stage, the basic story of Jack Maggs’ life in Australia, and his type of character, is much the same as Magwitch telling Pip in Great Expectations, about how he was given a ticket of leave and became wealthy.  But now, as you can find out from the Study Guide at 

https://statetheatrecompany.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Jack-Maggs-Study-Guide2.pdf ,
The story follows the enigmatic ex-convict Jack Maggs (Carey’s version of Magwitch)
returning to London from Australia and embarking on a relentless quest to find his
‘son’ Henry Phipps, who has mysteriously disappeared. Maggs soon becomes
entangled in the web of Phipps’ neighbour, Percy Buckle and his bizarre household,
where he makes a deal with young novelist and “mesmerist” Tobias Oates (or is
it Charles Dickens himself?) To find Phipps. Oates has other plans though, and in
Maggs, might just find the perfect inspiration for his new novel.

Though the acting, choreography, costumes and technical wizardry make Jack Maggs eminently watchable, I wish I had been made by, say, an excellent drama teacher to read the 34-page Study Guide first.  Then I could have made the right connections to follow the plot, and better understood the point of the thoroughly enjoyable singing of such recognisably Australian songs.

With this in mind, I certainly recommend this interesting original view of the convict origins and history of Australian colonial life.  And thoroughly support the aim of encouraging the reading of literature of the Charles Dickens kind for Years 9 – 12 as the State Theatre intends.  They might find, then, as I see it, that Great Expectations is a social satire (of course, Pip and Estelle are at last inseparable, at least according to Pip, in the final paragraph); while there is not the same degree of ironic humour in Adamson’s Jack Maggs – and I am yet to find out about Peter Carey’s version.  There’s a laugh in ‘Toby’s Oats”, at least.

Jack Maggs by Samuel Adamson
State Theatre South Australia

©Frank McKone, Canberra