Presented by Feast and CewChoo Productions
Reviewed Wednesday 17th November 2010
Venue: The Garden Shed, Feast Hub, Light Square
Season: 7pm nightly to Sat 21st November
Duration: 60min
Tickets: adult $25/conc $18/clubFRINGE $18
Bookings: Feastix 8463 0684 or http://www.tix.feast.org.au
Award winning playwright, Stephen House’s, darkly themed play was first produced in 1994, has journeyed interstate and overseas, and is now, following a season in Canberra, back for a brief run at this year’s Feast Festival, this time under the direction of Shane Pike and featuring James O’Connell as Johnny Boy.
Johnny Boy tells his story, beginning with the death of his mother and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child from an uncle. He thinks of himself as a hard man and admires a tough known simply as Dog, but worries that his feeling go beyond that. He accompanies Dog to a park where gay men meet and Dog uses Johnny to lead one of the men away from the main area so that he can be beaten up. Johnny later returns to the park for a very different reason and soon becomes a prostitute, later moving to King’s Cross, sliding downhill into drug addiction and eventually cross-dressing, becoming Johnny Girl. At first he is exceedingly popular but, as time goes by, the novelty of a new face wears off and he finds himself losing his appeal and going into a decline.
It is a dark and gritty tale of self-destruction and O’Connell immerses himself in the role, giving us a wonderfully moving portrayal of a confused and tormented young man who, in seeking to find himself, follows a path from which there seems to be no return. Somehow, though, O’Connell invests his character with a strange kind of dignity that he maintains throughout Johnny’s demise as he clings to the memory of his mother and her love for him, a tenuous link to better times past and the hope of a changed future.
This work was well worth revisiting and it stands up extremely well sixteen years on as the issues are still as relevant today as when House wrote this play.
Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Arts Editor, Glam Adelaide.
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