Jacky opens with the reunion of two very different brothers. The title character (Guy Simon) is a city slicker in Melbourne who’s planning his future: he has dreams of home ownership and, with the help of an employment agency, is about to finally leave the gig economy for full-time work. His younger brother Keith (Ngali Shaw) – “everyone’s favourite liability” – can barely hold down a job, and has come down from “the Mish” to crash on Jacky’s couch, ordering Uber Eats for every meal and rarely changing out of his trackies.
Keith’s arrival throws Jacky’s compartmentalised life into chaos, or at least puts two of his core relationships with white people under the microscope. Linda (Alison Whyte), a kind but culturally clueless woman, is helping Jacky (and eventually Keith) into stable work through an Indigenous community program in desperate need of funding. A transactional relationship becomes knottier as Jacky spends more time with his sex work client Glenn (Greg Stone), a bumbling recent divorcee wanting to explore a long-held racial fetish.
While they seem disparate on the surface, these two stories are different sides of the same coin: both come down to the presumption that the Indigenous man should palatably perform for the needs and expectations of white people.
This multifaceted work from Arrernte playwright Declan Furber Gillick was delayed for two years due to Covid, and made as part of the MTC’s Next Stage program. It is the second collaboration between the writer and director Mark Wilson (the first, award-winning Bighouse Dreaming, explored Indigenous youth incarceration and starred Furber Gillick in the lead role).
Jacky takes a little time before it hits its stride, but the deeper it goes, the more layers are revealed – it’s an arresting play that forces the audience to reckon with white saviour complex and tokenism under the wider umbrella of capitalism. Some of its points are obvious, but it is unflinching and often brutal in its examination.
The production’s stage design is relatively sparse: a double bed, a table and bar stools, and a fully equipped kitchen all sit alongside one another, with the actors moving into each space for different scenes. Its simplicity works: there’s not much separation from the domestic and professional settings, particularly as the storylines become more intertwined.
Keith is disturbed by Jacky’s pandering to the establishment by necessity of survival, accusing his brother of being a “sexy Black poster boy”. The bind that faces Jacky is clear: to continue to perform and compromise his Aboriginality at the expense of his culture and principles, or to reject the demands of the white gaze and forfeit the material wealth and stability he has been working towards.
Shaw is a scene-stealer as Keith. It’s clear he’s having fun, playing the larrikin with a wide grin and boyish charm, but he has the audience in stitches as often as commanding moments of tense silence. Keith doesn’t feel as fully fleshed out as Jacky, and more backstory may have rendered a fuller picture. Still, he provides a great foil: the contrast between the brothers’ demeanours and circumstances, and Keith’s steadfast allegiance to their mob, highlights the differences in the characters’ convictions.
There are elements of the 90s in-yer-face school of theatre in some of the play’s more intense moments. Scenes between Jacky and Glenn that devolve into humiliating racial abuse are particularly confronting, drawing shocked gasps from the audience. Stone switches with ease between a daggy, lovable middle-aged record collector, an oblivious and inexperienced sexual partner, and a vindictive racist hot with the rage of rejection – a frankly terrifying character.
Between this and a plotline about Jacky’s deception involving another Indigenous family, it is incredibly uncomfortable viewing at times with little reprieve – the directness of Furber Gillick’s writing demands the audience to pay full attention, removing the option to look away.
Jacky’s themes and messages are clear, but it avoids cliched monologues or any single moment of revelation. Instead, the audience journeys with the protagonist as he becomes complicit in his own erasure, then eventually fights back in his own way. Both thoughtful and furious, this production commands a visceral emotional response.
Jacky is on at Fairfax Studio in Melbourne until 24 June, as part of Rising festival
