The Harlequin Shuffle, a new play by Tony Strachan, is the latest Stage Company production in the Space Theatre in Adelaide. This two-hander is an affectionate study of the passing tradition of the family circus in Australia.

Larry Tandy is the last of the family in Tandy’s Circus, a down-at-heel tent show touring country towns. A former high-wire clown, he has fallen from grace to flagons of hock and a hoopla stall.

Steve, a young street-theatre performer and aspiring comic, has joined the circus to learn trade secrets and help revive them to their former glory. In particular, he wants Larry to teach him his signature gag, the harlequin shuffle.

While it seems that all the middle-aged Larry will shuffle now is off his mortal coil, he is drawn by the enthusiasm of the young apprentice and recalls yarns and lore from the heyday of the sawdust ring.

He is bemused by Steve’s knowledge of the classic acts, puzzled by his preference for herbal tea and appalled that he will not eat the ambrosia of circuses, fairy floss.

Although the familiar story of the superannuated Clown with the Dark Secret is nothing short of hoary, Tony Strachan calculates the material within an inch of its life. He has an admiration for his subject and a canny sense of dialogue.

The running debate about the function of comedy – whether, as Steve says, the circus is “a big spectacular village idiot, instead of (being) a big spectacular whole human being” – is deftly managed although at times Steve’s feminist and other political credentials are unnecessarily overdrawn. Strachan has sketched the character well; we don’t need such consciously comprehensive profiling.

Don Barker, as Larry Tandy, is somewhat remote in the opening monologue but develops the character with considerable tact. Overall, the trace of reticence in his performance prevents Larry from being unduly florid or avuncular just as Strachan deflects the sentimentality of the writing, not by cancelling out the pathos with jokes, but by listing and redirecting it in the nick of time.

The role of Steve similarly requires considerable poise and range and Igor Sas is more than equal to it. He manages to register eagerness without being gee-whiz about it and he undertakes his clowning tasks with proficiency, in particular his very funny chainsaw gag.

Director John Strehlow and designer Jill Halliday have produced a concise play with an apt set. There is good use of the dual acting areas and the set suggests both Larry’s proximity to the big top and his alienation from it, and his living quarters are convincingly dilapidated.

It is not faint praise to say that the Harlequin Shuffle is a thoughtful and unpretentious play. As Larry would say, it all comes back to balancing.

The National Times, June 7, 1985, p.35.