Colin Friels in Scaramouche Jones at Arts Centre Melbourne (photo by Lachlan Bryan)

The key global event that shapes Scaramouche’s life – like a dying fall in the background – is the waning of the British Empire. Scaramouche is born in Trinidad – which became an English colony only ten years before his birth – to a gypsy mother and an unknown English father. His mother comments on his pale skin, the first of seven white masks he will wear in his lifetime. It is a curious image, the application of white face that corresponds to the British shedding of territories. And it serves to deepen our interest in this literate, loquacious clown, who may or may not be a ghost or cypher.

Of course, a play like this is totally dependent on the performer, and Colin Friels rises magnificently to the challenge. The program notes cite this as ‘his first one-man show’, but surely this is a mere technicality. Friels was recently seen in the Belvoir/MTC co-production of Brian Friels’s Faith Healer, a play made up of four dramatic monologues, and he completely dominated the format. He is an actor who can have a thorny relationship with his fellow cast members – he has a wild unpredictability that can jar with the cohesion of an ensemble – so the solo performance might just be his ideal vehicle. Friels is superb here, mercurial and vibrant, but constantly nudging at the loss and dissatisfaction beneath the surface. There is nothing resigned about the character or the performance; if there is pathos, it is full, abundant, deeply life-affirming.

Scaramouche Jones playwright, Justin Butcher. Alkinos Tsilimidos’s direction is exemplary. Having worked with Friels before, in John Logan’s Red, he clearly understands the actor’s process, but there is something about the material’s symbolic register here that suits him better. Butcher’s is by far the more poetic work, and Tsilimidos seems more comfortable with it. Richard Roberts’s set is glorious, a convincing garden space just outside the big top that is also a suggestion of a primordial garden of return. It is beautifully lit by Matt Scott, and Tristan Meredith’s sound design is so delicate it seems embedded.

Scaramouche Jones is a richly literate work, bursting with imagery and reference – from Shakespeare to the King James Bible, through Dickens and Gilbert and Sullivan – but never bogged down or entombed by them. The play is so crowded with characters, accents and personalities that it feels at times more like a nineteenth-century novel than a solo performance. If it is political, it is only lightly so; Scaramouche’s white faces are constantly affording him privileges, and increasingly seem made up of the white ash of Empire, but they are also personal masks that shield him from a purely personal tragedy. This is a great vehicle for an actor, and Friels relishes every beat. It’s a curious contradiction, that the sad clown could be such an agent of joy.

Scaramouche Jones was performed by Wander Productions at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre from 15 to 25 August 2018. Performance attended: August 17.

ABR Arts is generously supported by The Ian Potter Foundation and the ABR Patrons.