Jack Charles v The Crown

This uneasy mix of stand-up entertainment and over-pointed one-man drama is entirely redeemed by the endearing presence of its star, co-writer and raison d’être — aboriginal elder/actor Jack Charles. His neat, compact body topped with a mass of wild, grey hair and beard, the 67 year old Charles gives us glimpses into his troubled life (“20 years in jail, 40 years addicted”), sings songs and makes several decent-looking pots at an on-stage pottery wheel.

His is a shocking Stolen Generation story. Taken from his mother as a baby, he spent his first 14 years as the only black kid in a Salvation Army Boys’ Home, meeting his many scattered siblings and cousins years later by chance. An acting career was regularly interrupted by long stints in jail for burglaries committed to feed his heroin addiction.

Charles’s amplified narrative is accompanied by projected photographs, press clippings and sequences edited from Bastardy, the award-winning 2008 documentary that followed him for seven years of his troubled life. He has a richly sonorous voice, with gorgeous diction, but the script, credited to him and playwright John Romeril, is needlessly ornate. He often struggles to get it right.

After a lengthy change of costume, he returns to perform the title sequence, an address to the white man’s High Court pleading to expunge his — and, by extension, the Stolen Generation’s — understandable criminal record.

Accompanied by an excellent three-piece band, who supply background music and sound effects throughout, he ends the evening by singing a couple of upbeat songs and the audience loves him for it. 

Frank Hatherley

Photograph: Heidrun Lohr