It’s not often that a contemporary Aboriginal play brings Ibsen to my mind. But I’ve always thought that Ibsen’s identification of the truth-teller as the ace-disrupter in his tortured plays was his major dramaturgical achievement. Does Declan Furber Gillick acknowledge his debt to the Norwegian, I wonder? For this Mparntwe/Melbourne writer with Aranda ancestry has created a highly original truth-teller in his character of Keith – the no-good brother – in his clever, often laugh-out-loud play, Jacky. From his unwanted arrival on to Jacky’s “good wicket” in Melbourne, Keith’s consistency and growth as a cultural elder through the play is a vital part of its success.

And Baardi man, Danny Howard captures Keith perfectly. Truth-telling (sometimes) at the start about the appeal of being a baker’s apprentice, “but not every day”, this runamuck exiled by the mob from ‘the mish’ somewhere up north,  grows to an understanding of what city-boy Jacky has lost as he sets his heart on the urban dreams of a job and a mortgage, whatever the price.

Guy Simon, as a queer Birripi and Waddi Waddi man from mid-NSW, who’s gone on to win a Helpmann Award and a Balnaves Fellowship as actor, writer and director, seems to project Jacky as the goods. Yes, he’s making money as a rent-boy, and his anger at Keith’s slovenliness and lack of ambition seems perfectly justified. But the processes that bring him down to the point of self-realisation in the end are so cleverly plotted that neither he nor his audience really expect the fall until it comes.

Yes, there’s a pretty massive plot device by which Glenn (subtly played by Greg Stone), Jacky’s bedroom client, turns out to be the ex-husband of Linda (a delightfully devious Mandy McElhinney), with an inevitable awkward confrontation. But both these non-Indigenous characters pressure Jacky in different ways. Glenn reveals from the start that one of his marital problems was porn and “Black cocks”, which has lead him to Jacky. How could that not have racist roots? And how could they not burst out whenever the men’s relationship seems to be becoming just a little less than commercial?

Linda, on the other hand, seems to be offering everything a young man on the make might want. But there’s always a hint that this fairy-godmother is happy to use Jacky’s Aboriginality in the DEI games that her charity has to play. And when Sorry Business gets in the way of presenting the local First Nations to potential philanthropists, well, any Aboriginal person will surely do!

A Mephistophelean bargain, offered so reasonably.

Now it’s Keith’s time to come good, which Danny Howard does with calmly sensible truth-telling. Ibsen and Furber Gillick have worked their magic. We, the non-Indigenous audience, have had our white expectations disrupted.

Mark Wilson directs the twists and turns of this multi-set work on Belvoir’s pocket-handkerchief stage with great facility. Though it’s intriguing that Guy Simon has made the point that after playing three Indigenous roles for white directors like Wilson, he’s determined to become a director himself to get the cultural stuff right. Actually, I reckon they did that pretty well between them in Jacky.

This MTC production runs at Belvoir Theatre as part of the Sydney Festival until 2nd February.