Mojo

Londoner Jez Butterworth was 24 when his play Mojo exploded onto the Royal Court Theatre stage in 1995. It won all that year’s Best Play awards and instigated a stream of high-powered gangster dramas for UK theatre and, especially, cinema. It’s well worth collecting in this vivid STC production, directed at a cracking pace by Iain Sinclair on a brilliant setting by Pip Runciman, quite the best I’ve seen at The Wharf.

Basically a tautly meshed 5-actor piece with exhilarating, overlapping torrents of dialogue, the production suffered a blow when one of the team had to drop out close to the opening. Critics were deterred until the second week of performances to allow replacement Lindsay Farris to settle into the key role of abused and dangerously unpredictable Baby. Farris is now quite marvellous in the slinkily lethal role.

You’ve got to be alert during this play’s adrenaline rush. With key characters popping uppers throughout, the Cockney dialogue stutters, spirals and repeats. “Do something or don’t do something,” urges Skinny, “but isn’t it time to do something?”

It’s 1958. On Runciman’s wonderful underground Soho nightclub setting, Skinny (Eamon Farren), Potts (Josh McConville) and Sweets (Ben O’Toole) are coping with two sudden disappearances — the rising rock-n-roll singer Silver Johnny and owner/gangster Ezra, whose son Baby (Farris) must suddenly face the blood-soaked challenges of succession. In his way stands Mickey (Tony Martin), the club’s dubious manager.

It’s definitely a young man’s play: plotting takes second place to the rushing, pill-and-testosterone-fuelled characters. The acting is fine all-round and Director Sinclair has great fun at the slippery, blood-soaked conclusion: the daily dry cleaning bill must be considerable.

Frank Hatherley

Images: Alon Ilsar, Jeremy Davidson and Paul Kilpinen & Tony Martin and Eamon Farren  in Sydney Theatre Company’s Mojo. © Brett Boardman.