Jasper Jones

The first thing that will impress audiences about the Melbourne Theatre Company's Jasper Jones is its extravagant set. Both the fictional regional Australian town of Corrigan and a murky bushland dam are ingeniously recreated on stage - no doubt thanks to generous corporate sponsorship.

Kate Mulvany, actor-cum-playwright, has adapted Craig Silvey's now-classic 2009 young adult novel - oft-compared to Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Remarkably for an Australian play, this is its third production - Sam Strong directing.

Charlie Bucktin (Nicholas Denton) is an awkward, pensive, bookloving 13-year-old who aspires to write "the great Australian novel". He narrates a story unfolding in the mid-'60s that centres on his friendships - with the titular Jasper Jones (Guy Simon, as seen in Redfern Now), a street-smart Indigenous kid routinely cast as Corrigan's scapegoat; gifted and resilient Vietnamese migrant Jeffrey Lu (Harry Tseng); and gawky, daydreaming crush Eliza Wishart (Taylor Ferguson). Jasper embroils Charlie in a suspenseful mystery, the pair investigating the shocking death of Eliza's older sister (and Jasper's girlfriend) Laura (Ferguson again).

Jasper Jones is atmospheric Australian gothic. The themes of rural racism, xenophobia, sexual subjugation and social fissure hum in the background like cicadas in summer. But any grimness is countered by the play's abundant charm, humour and... cricket. Jasper Jones manages to be simultaneously feel-good and topical entertainment.