Murray Bramwell

Honk If You Are Jesus
By Peter Goldsworthy and Martin Laud Gray
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Odeon Theatre, Adelaide.
February 27. Tickets $45 – $55. Bookings BASS 131 246
Until March 18.

It is the business of writers to tell us what’s in the wind, even before the shutters begin to rattle. But Peter Goldsworthy’s 1992 novel, Honk If You Are Jesus, has turned out to be especially prescient.

Before Dolly the sheep, stem cell research and the rise to prominence of the religious right, Honk, with its lively wit and shrewd, sardonic comedy was sounding klaxons about science, ethics, God and the whole damned thing.

Now, adapted by Goldsworthy and director Martin Laud Gray, Honk is State Theatre’s auspicious contribution to the 2006 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts – and it is a splendid success.

To his credit Peter Goldsworthy has allowed the eminently readable texture of his novel to be distilled to its dramatic essentials. The plotline has been tightened, characters discarded and many funny lines sacrificed for the greater good.

And all the better to depict the battle of wits and wills between the Reverend Hollis Schultz, the evangelist patron of a finger-lickin’ bible college on the Queensland Gold Coast and Dr Mara Fox, a world weary obstetrician with a speciality in IVF innovation. As Schultz says, he is man of the cloth who likes to cut his cloth to suit the occasion. He may be an Arkansas preacher but he and his wife Mary-Beth have a keen interest in the science of fertility and, with Nobel laureate and pioneer cloning expert, Bill Scanlon, also on the Schultz faculty, there are some Big Ideas afoot.

Laud Gray’s production is given a titanium sheen as Mary Moore’s clever set creates a cathedral of science complete with double helix pulpit and an imposing mandala of suspended test tubes. Stuart Day’s Beyond Tomorrow music blips and bubbles and large circular screens monitor close encounters of the cervical kind.
But it is the well-judged performances which make things come alive. Despite suffering a rehearsal injury and displaying a visibly swollen ankle, Caroline Mignone is excellent as the conflicted, but intellectually vibrant, Mara while Greg Stone is outstanding as Schultz. Like Michaela Cantwell as Mary- Beth, he resists caricature to provide an intriguing counter-balance to the ethical free fall represented by the technicians-for-hire, Scanlon and Tad (Justin Moore and Jonathan Mill.)

Perceptive, original and engrossing, Honk if You Are Jesus is destined for wide success. It is an entertainment brimming with intelligence: hallelujah, that’s a combination worth cloning.

“Science, ethics and religion prove a winning mix”
The Australian, March 2, 2006, p.12.