The Untouchable Juli

Outcasts or social misfits have never fared well in Australian society, or any society for that matter, and even worse in small-town Australia of the 1930s. This is the setting of Brenna Lee-Cooney’s play based on James Aldridge’s The Untouchable Juli, one of his six St Helen’s novels that include My Brother Tom and A Sporting Proposition which became the Disney movie Ride a Wild Pony.

Juli, a half-cast slightly-autistic boy, arrives in St Helen’s with his bible-spouting aboriginal mother and from the outset he doesn’t fit in. Brilliant with figures, he discovers a talent for music without any formal training. Things take a dark turn when he’s accused of his mother’s murder. His best friend’s father, a solicitor, defends him and in the process has to lay Juli’s soul bare, which exonerates him but extinguishes his fire of creativity.

Lee-Cooney’s adaptation uses mime, balletic movement, dance, music, and sometimes a chorus-line to tell the tale in brief vignettes that give the work a surreal quality. Whilst this no-frills, smell-of-an-oily-rag production is costumed by Vinnies, with set-pieces sourced from the local tip (a half corrugated iron drum, tree stump and table frame), it doesn’t lack for engagement or empathy.

Heading the cast is Sandro Colarelli, a stalwart on the Brisbane independent theatre scene, who plays multiple characters. His comic constable is a gem – petty and funny, while his hell-fire preacher would put the fear of God into anyone. He’s also good as an untalented ocker musician.

Samuel Valentine negotiates the highs and lows of the troubled Juli with passion, while soul-singer Gertrude Benjamin, in her first straight role, brings warmth and heart to the mother.

There was a genuine naturalness to Eamon Clohesy’s performance of the best-friend Kit that was honest and truthful, traits he also brought to the Narrator. It was far and away the best performance in the play.

The cast were not helped by the Town Hall’s poor acoustics, and sometimes the effects overpowered the performances, but Finn Gilfedder-Cooney’s music masterfully captured the sound of the 1930s.

Lee-Conney’s adaptation worked best with the two-hander intimate scenes between Kit and Juli, and Kit and the mother, but the finale, with its diatribe about philistines in small-country Australian towns had far too much soap-box orator to it.

The inaugural production of The Untouchable Juli premiered at Studio 188 in Ipswich 17-25 July before touring to Sandgate where it played 3 performances.

Peter Pinne