1991
Jonah
Book and Lyrics by John Romeril
Music by Alan John
State Theatre Company
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
It is not hard to see why John Romeril would be attracted to Jonah. With its temper democratic; bias offensively Australian, Louis Stone’s naturalistic tale of the Botany Road push, circa 1905, gathers around it many of the elements of Romeril’s own work. It is accessible and generous-hearted, a likeable yarn with a darkly mythic logic. The story of Jonah Jones, the hunchback who makes good in the boot trade, has a gospel truth – for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul. Or, put in the secular mode -what’s the use of the factory if you don’t get the girl ? The fiction that the rich are unhappy and can’t see for the camels in their eyes dies hard everywhere- and it dies very hard indeed in Jonah.
Creditably, John Romeril doesn’t chafe against the simple lineaments of his source and, with collaborator Alan John has created a promenade musical that’s well worth an amble through. When Jonah first played at the Wharf in Sydney it didn’t fare well. Re-jigged, recast and redirected it is a different prospect.
In Mary Moore’s design it is theatre in the square – the Space is transformed by authentically detailed shopfront facades in which the players perform and the audience various drape themselves. Greeted by the players as we enter and encouraged to join the singing and dancing in the opening moments of the production there is an impression of the show being like Romeril’s work in the Kelly Dance and Centenary Dance days. Not so, it soon transpires, when the narrative takes over and the performers become glassy-eyed actors again.
Director Neil Armfield has kept the work attractively modest in scale and is well-served by an excellent cast. John Wood and Nancye Hayes are skilled popular performers and suited to the mode, and Paul Blackwell, particularly as the immigrant Paasch, is again, richly comic. As Ada and Pinkey Eileen Darley and Heather Bolton work well together – Darley, an expert in the round, sings as magnificently as ever. Of the street punks Ian Dixon fares well and Maurie Annese shows vitality in his song and dance as Chook. David Field’s Jonah is a great strength of the production- saturnine, driven, and emotionally displaced he drew a mirror to his soul without bumping into Quasimodo.
Romeril’s sharp lyrics come to life, especially when it’s street life – The Push Song and Jonah’s the Boot are unsentimental to say the least. Eileen Darley is powerful with Ada (I’m Afraid-a Loving You) and the factory chorus in Seven to Six, like Dog eat Dog, is a winner. In Act Two The Market Song, Stick with the People and again, Darley’s solo in Square Peg Round Hole, are all highlights.
Performed by a trio -piano, clarinet and violin, Alan John’s music insinuates deeply into the work. At the keyboard himself he ranges from music hall bathos to Jelly Roll Morton. At times arty and over-embellished, his melodies, despite their revisions, still yearn at times to be more simply memorable.
Jonah is a strong new stage creation and proof of the value of re-working material. Although Romeril still struggles to find a balance between the political portrait of a community and the Dickensian tragedy of Jonah himself. It is an honourable problem but a problem nevertheless. The show is also overlong and seemingly unclear about how to end itself. The introduction of the war theme and an army marching in boots is an inspired addition, the fumbling proposal from Jonah to Sarah Giltinan (Carmel McGlone) is a whimsical vitiation of the anti-romantic themes in the play. For all that, it is to be hoped that this is only the beginning for this accomplished piece of music theatre. As John Romeril and his henchman Alan John have said it themselves – by all means see the phantom, but why not check the hunchback.
The Adelaide Review, No.93, October, 1991. p.40