ABUSE IN A SCHOOL STOREROOM
Author: BRONWYN PHILLIPS
Date: 20/04/1988
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

The Jesus Clock is an intense, violent, but predictable two-act thriller.

On the last day of term at a Catholic boys' school a teacher and pupil are
locked in a storeroom. The teacher, convincingly portrayed by David
Ritchie, actually abuses his pupils. The boy, played dead-pan by David
Wenham, is the spirit of a pupil long deceased. Teasing and tormenting, he
leads the teacher through a maze of lies and deceits tricking him finally
into suicide.

In The Jesus Clock nothing is as it appears. This is due, however, to
immature writing rather than subtleties of plot.

The character of the ghost is ambivalent. He has an ability to walk
through walls and produce hallucinations yet in the end is unable to
unlock the door and escape. Is he a mortal pretending to be a spirit or
vice versa? Neither from this world nor the next, he sits uncomfortably in
between - an unconvincing example of the Catholic notion of limbo.

Writer-director Adam Quinn says in the program notes that The Jesus
Clock"... attempts to avoid a central theme or message". The absence of a
clear, unifying idea is the play's biggest fault.

The result is a mishmash of themes ranging from the horrors of a Catholic
boyhood to murder. Finally, one man lies dead, the other trapped by his
own cruelty - a trite, unoriginal ending suggesting that if you are wicked
you will be punished.