
Written by Declan Furber Gillick. Directed by Mark Wilson. Co-Presented by Belvoir Theatre Company and Sydney Festival. Produced by Melbourne Theatre Company
A stellar start to Belvoir’s 2025 season that engages through its sharp social commentary and resonating lead performance
Reviewed by Juliana Payne
Venue: 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Dates: 16 Jan to 2 Feb 2025
Tickets: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/jacky/
Type: Contemporary drama, Political, In your face, Adult themes and content
If you liked: Mystery Road, Total Control, True Colours, Sweet Country
Declan Furber Gillick’s play Jacky is an upfront, challenging (to white Australians) exploration of identity, family, and the weight of generational trauma. Set against a contemporary backdrop, the play skilfully combines humour and raw emotion to unpack complex themes surrounding cultural disconnection and belonging. Its powerful narrative draws the audience into Jacky’s journey to cultural awareness, making it both personal and politically relatable in this post-referendum Australia.
Jacky is a thoroughly modern play for this moment – he is a gorgeous young Indigenous guy playing the system for all it’s worth, taking what he can get out of a society that still treats him shockingly – but he can ignore it because he’s making coin. This is thrown out of whack when his younger brother turns up, and threatens Jacky’s carefully contructed house of cards that straddles the black and white worlds of Australian society.

Guy Simon as the lead character Jacky is beautifully effortless and seamless in this role. He is the lodestar to the three other wandering characters around him. The play is reminiscent of a Pilgrim’s Progress or a Candide, with the young innocent hero learning the harsh truths of the world, along with the audience as the hypocrisies, corruption and just plain selfishness of the other characters play out in the heightened political context of Indigenous politics.
Mandy McElhinney was as real and skilled as she ever has been, Greg Stone in the odious and difficult role of Glenn is suitably odious and difficult. Danny Howard provides the bittersweet comic relief, but we all know his character – as Jacky’s hopeless brother – is on a hiding to nowhere in white Australia: even though he can critique it, he cannot beat it.
Mark Wilson’s direction ensures that the story’s emotional beats land with precision, balancing moments of introspection with dynamic pacing, and is peppered with dark humour even in its most awful moments. The script tends to the didactic at times, but hey, this is raw challenging agitprop stuff that seeks to shake the (white) audience out of its complacency. The frustration in the content is the frustration felt by First Nations people in the face of white paternalism and stereotyping. I wish that in the post referendum era we could have moved on from this, but sadly the blatant political manipulation of the Voice Referendum makes this play even more relevant and its barbs against Australian colonialism and white Australia’s ‘great silence’ on our history are still sharp.
“…a deeply engaging production that blends sharp social commentary with a resonant personal story”
The minimalist set design by Christina Smith allows the performances to shine, with lighting by Matt Scott creates different spaces across the single set, amplifying Jacky’s emotional highs and lows, and how he differentiates his home from his hotel location where he does his sex work, keeping him in the spotlight at all times.
Jacky is a deeply engaging production that blends sharp social commentary with a resonant personal story that – thanks to Simon’s performance – is well worth seeing. Australian mainstream culture needs more plays like this to shout aloud and break the great silence we endure over what white society has done to our First Nations peoples.
Theatre Thought: What is it going to take for Australia to face up to and deal with our colonial history?

TEAM
Declan Furber Gillick
Writer
Mark Wilson
Director
Cast
Danny Howard
Keith
Mandy McElhinney
Linda
Guy Simon
Jacky
Greg Stone
Glenn
Creatives
Christina Smith
Set Designer
Emily Barrie
Costume Designer
Matt Scott
Lighting Designer
James Henry
Composer and Sound Designer
Amy Cater
Intimacy Coordinator
Matt Furlani
Voice and Dialect Coach
Joel Bray
Assistant Director
Jennifer Medway
Dramaturg
Mark Wilson
Dramaturg
Jess Keepence
Stage Manager
Maddison Craven
Assistant Stage Manager