Review: Poor boy

By most measures, Poor Boy — a collaboration between Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company — is a grand theatrical production.

The multi-storey set (by Iain Aitken) and stunning lighting (by Nick Schlieper) are obviously fine starting points that make full use of the Sydney Theatre’s technology — a child’s tricycle that ghostily circles and creaks riderless; a swing suspended from seemingly nowhere; a bandstand that moves effortlessly between two quite distinct levels.

Poor Boy was used by the MTC earlier this year to launch its new theatre, which apparently has even more whirligigs and gizmos. It would have been interesting to see the play there as well.

The music, based on a collection of songs from Tim Finn, genuine international superstar, was, of course, a highlight.

STC and MTC insist that Poor Boy isn’t a musical, rather “a play with songs”, and I think I understand why. In a musical, the story is told primarily through the songs themselves. In Poor Boy, the songs — even though sung by the actors — augment and add mood to the story, which is told more conventionally through speech.

The band and overall musical management (by Ian McDonald) are excellent. If you’re already a Tim Finn fan, you could justify being there for the music alone. If you’re not, you might well become one.

Matt Cameron has conjured a delightful story, loosely based on a modern Indian “true story”, in which a young girl claims to be the reincarnated daughter of another family and can demonstrate enough background knowledge to be taken seriously.

In Poor Boy, Jem Glass (played on alternate nights by Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke and Jed Rosenberg) stuns his family on his seventh birthday by nearly being run over, then announcing that he’s really Danny Prior (Matthew Newton), a young married man killed exactly seven years earlier in an unexplained hit-run accident.

Danny’s been having feinting spells recently, and hearing strange voices from an old, broken radio, and he’s only a boy, afterall, and things like that just don’t happen, do they? So, of course, he’s not believed.

But Jem has ways of convincing the Prior family — Danny’s mother Ruth (Sarah Peirse), his brother Miles (Matt Dyktynski) and especially his widow Clare (Abi Tucker), who holds a very guilty secret about his death — that there may be more to his story than a youngster’s fertile imagination could explain.

It throws Danny’s birth family — father Sol (Greg Stone), who has his own very guilty secret, mother Viv (Linda Cropper) and teenage sister Sadie (Sara Gleeson) — into a year of chaotic desperation as they gradually lose the tug-o-war over where he belongs, and certainly where he wants to belong.

But this isn’t just a Twilight Zone (boomers should remember those late-night twisted plots) tale from the supernatural. It’s a also very much a story of family conflict, and at least of resolution if not redemption.

Simon Phillips, the director of Poor Boy, handles very well the construct of having Matthew Newton, as the ghost of Danny, onstage simultaneously with young Jem, and providing most of the dialogue.

Newton puts in a very strong performance overall and shows himself well worthy of his recent accolades. He also reveals a fine, strong voice.

But all the performances are very good — the still-grieving Ruth who can’t believe she has her son back; the rather nasty Miles, carrying an anvil-sized chip as the younger brother; Clare, still living with Danny’s family and unable to comprehend why she’d been so foolish; the wanton, flirtatious Sadie; Sol, the rather hopeless dreamer trying to come to terms with guilt from the past; Viv, frustrated and battling a severely decaying relationship; and Jem (on our night played by Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke), who struts and prances around the stage with the confidence and conviction that suggest he might have been there before.

Look, it’s a bit too melodramatic, especially, after the intermission. And it requires a good deal of suspended belief — but if you can’t suspend belief while your watching theatre then where and when can you suspend it?

Overall, though, this is a very fine entertainment that makes you think a little of your own baggage and, ultimately, has you walking out onto the street feeling pretty good and humming some great songs.

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