The Boy Jones Written and directed by Sky Gilbert Starring Gil Garratt, Jennifer Waiser and Richard MacDonagh At the Studio Theatre in Toronto Rating: **
Long before Charles and Di tea towels made the Royal Family a household commodity, the English monarchy had to cope with over-eager fans. In one of the first documented cases of celebrity stalking, during the mid-19th century a boy named Edwin Jones made headlines after he broke into Buckingham Palace not once but three times, merely to gaze on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Playwright Sky Gilbert's intriguing if limited new play, The Boy Jones, reimagines the circumstances and motivation behind Jones's obsession in a two-act musical comedy that dips into burlesque.
With a distinctly 21st-century point of view, Gilbert targets the myths of the class system, but it's like killing a mosquito with a shotgun. Jones (Gil Garratt) is a street urchin with an "'uge curiosity," convinced that Victoria and Albert (Jennifer Waiser and Richard MacDonagh) are the epitome of beauty, wisdom and kindness. But disillusionment soon follows. It turns out that Victoria is a vacuous airhead more interested in dancing at balls than affairs of state and her fastidious husband has all the appeal of an accountant during tax season.
Jones's recurring trips to the palace are to crack the meaning of the code in which Victoria and Albert speak; he can't comprehend that Albert's complaints of a corn on his foot don't hold any greater secret significance.
Gilbert's message is obvious: It's the ragged, dimwitted Jones that is the only character of integrity, since he confounds society and stereotypes.
Even the appealing, if neck-cramp-inducing set reinforces the theme of class boundaries. Two sets of seats on risers face each other, split by a floor-level stage. The scenes with the Royal Family unfold behind a scrim (which Jones literally breaks through) at the far end of the theatre. Closer to the audience on the opposite end, the scenes of the lower classes unfold, including Jones's comical, rehabilitative stint on a giant tread wheel.
Heavy on narrative but light on plot, the 2½-hour play meanders too slowly, alternating between comic vignette and melodrama. With Jones's 'uge curiosity doubling as a not-too-clever metaphor, there is a whisper of homosexuality, such as Jones's benevolent relationship with Elgar, the tobacconist who takes him in after his prison term, as well as with the ne'er-do-wells who want to whisk Jones off to sea. But the treatment of these relationships is casual and secondary, making it hard to determine what Gilbert is trying to say, aside from an affirmation that being homosexual is okay.
It is the energy of the cast, principally Garratt as Jones, that makes the play watchable. As the innocent waif, Garratt infuses the character with an endearing, amiable credulity. And there is a charming quirkiness about the play when characters burst into song, such as Queen Victoria's lamentation, "Why are the poor so stupid?" or Jones's music-hall ditty about the Queen's underpants. But, while funny, they don't really add any depth to The Boy Jones.
If these songs lack a musical question, ultimately so does the play. With its subtitle: The Rape of History: In which a Queen's virtue is threaten'd by a boy's overpow'ring curiosity, it sounds provocative. But it doesn't live up to its promise and only whets your own curiosity. The Boy Jones runs until Sunday at the Studio Theatre in Toronto. For information: 416-978-7986.