FUN WITHOUT ANY DEPTH, ALAS
Author: MARTIN PORTUS
Date: 21/04/1988
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

KNOWN recently for its often obscure experimentalism, Bay Street Theatre
has returned to more conventional forms with Adam Quinn's new chiller
thriller.

Quinn's prolific output has long had a platform through his Crispy Bacon
Theatre Company which, after moving from the Globe Cafe, is here
presenting his latest work, The Jesus Clock. The writer and director
defiantly checkmates critics by noting in the progam that the play
attempts to avoid any theme or message. "Love and cruelty played as a game
can be fun," he said.

It's certainly no fun for the authoritarian teacher trapped in a storeroom
with a revenge-driven schoolboy. David Ritchie is suitably unsympathetic
as the bullish and inexplicably antagonistic teacher. David Wenham plays
the boy whose ghost-like appearance suggests that he's been haunting this
Catholic school for 50 years. They meet on the last day of school as the
"barbarian"developers prepare to demolish its old buildings - not that
there's any intended message in that.

The true origins and motives of Quinn's characters remain unanswered; left
as riddles in a web of lies and countermoves as the boy begins his teasing
game of torment. With veiled allusions to earlier deaths and sexual
scandals at the school, the only truth we know about these two is what we
see in the gothic confines of the locked storeroom. Quinn's skill is in
creating a suspense where our curiosity rarely wanders outside the walls.

In this he is supported by masterly performances, especially in the quiet
and measured cruelty of Wenham. The thriller, of course, ends
stategically with a deadly surprise, but a more satisfying one would be
some revelation, some insight, about what motivated this macabre trickery.

Quinn shortchanges his considerable structural skills as a playwright by
failing to give any meaning to his characters. The result is fun, yes, but
nothing more.