Scaramouche Jones

On the Eve of a new millenium, a the hundred-year-old clown Scaramouche Jones looks spends the last hour of his life looking back over a journey that spans seas, continents, and indeed the entire twentieth century. As Scaramouche, drunk, stumbles into the tent, he gradually begins to open up to the audience about the first fifty years of his life, moving through the dying frontiers of the British Empire in a one-man epic journey from Trinidad to England.

Writer-director Justin Butcher's acting is nothing short of exceptional, and effortlessly carries the story and the audience along with it. Grotesquely presented yet surprisingly charming, Butcher allows the clown's tragedy to reverberate and sustains interest for every one of the ninety minutes he dominates the room. Although told end-on, Assembly's Spiegeltent appears the perfect venue as we really do feel the intimacy that might well be a clown's dressing room in the back of the circus.

Those expecting a clown show, however will be disappointed. While humour plays its part, Butcher's insights about the end of colonalism through the eyes of a Trinidadian boy with a white face whose dream it has always been to make it to England, are poignant. Moving through a collapsing world, Scaramouche Jones invites thinking on class, race, and colonialism without lecturing for a single moment. Instead, everything in the room is working together: the sound and lighting complement every step and transition, while the venue itself lends its hand.

This is one of those rare piece which succeeds in gripping onto its audience from beginning to end. I was on the edge of my seat throughout. This is exactly what one-person theatre can do when the writing, performance and theatrical craft all meet at the same point in time.

Runs 6–11 August and 13–30 August at 4:10pm.