In his early 20s, Samuel Adamson moved from Adelaide to London to quietly explore the idea of becoming a playwright, away from the gaze and expectations of family and friends. He describes himself as a “secret writer” back then.

“I think I needed to leave in order to find the courage to write, actually,” he says. “I wasn’t necessarily writing plays, but I was definitely exploring how I might express myself and interrogate the world via writing. But I kept it quite private.”

Now, at 54 and with his works having been performed at London’s most prestigious theatres over a 30-year career, there is something profoundly triumphant about Adamson returning to Adelaide to oversee the first-ever production of one of his plays made in his hometown.

That play is Adamson’s adaptation of Peter Carey’s best-selling and Miles Franklin award-winning novel Jack Maggs, which is a rework of the Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations. It will be performed by State Theatre Company of South Australia in a world premiere at the Dunstan Playhouse later this month.

The cast of Jack Maggs. Photo: Claudio Raschella

Adamson, who grew up on a farm in Victor Harbor, is thrilled to be home for this 10-week stint.

“It sounds corny, and I think probably writers always say this about their current project, but there is something really special to me about this one,” he says.

“It’s been quite a long journey for me to get some work on here, and there is something quite amazing to me about having professional work on in my home town. I think when I was young, I felt that maybe the State Theatre Company was a kind of place I could never enter. It did feel as if, for whatever reason, it was closed off  to me. So, I’m really thrilled about being here with Jack Maggs.”

The production is a collaboration which began in 2018 with State Theatre’s then-artistic director Geordie Brookman, who reached out to Adamson asking if he had anything in particular he’d like to bring to the stage here.

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Keen to do an adaptation of an Australian book, Adamson’s first thought was to adapt Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, but that didn’t work out.

“I think that would make an absolutely brilliant Australian play, but I think somebody in Sydney was doing it, but it doesn’t seem to have happened. So, if anybody wants to commission me to do that, I’d be more than happy,” he laughs.

It was Brookman who suggested the idea of Jack Maggs, a story set in 19^th-century London. It details the exploits of ex-convict Maggs, who returns to London from Australia, embarking on a mission to find his “son” Henry Phipps, who has disappeared.

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“For some reason I sort of failed to notice that book on my shelf, I think partly because it was almost too good an idea,” Adamson says.

“I mean, I think I’m the right writer for it because it’s a story about a convict with a crisis of identity. He returns to England with all of these flash ideas about being a gentleman, and his story is about the realisation that actually he is an Australian. So, it’s an incredible piece about national identity and the very complex historical relationship between England and Australia.

“And because I’ve been in England for so long, I just thought, actually this is right up my alley. There’s a lot here that I really relate to.”

In March 2019, when Brookman resigned from the State Theatre Company and moved to Berlin, Jack Maggs became a global collaboration between Brookman as director, Adamson in London, and the then incoming STC artistic director Mitchell Butel in Adelaide. Throw COVID into that mix in 2020 and the production logistics involved meetings, castings and actor read-throughs all done over Zoom.

Jack Maggs rehearsals with Ahunim Abebe and Nathan O’Keefe. Photo supplied

Now, all the pieces have come together in a production that stars local actor Mark Saturno in the lead role.

“It is a superb cast,” says Adamson. “There’s something about the sort of front footedness of Australian acting that really suits this play.

“Mark Saturno as Jack Maggs, he’s absolutely wonderful – heartbreakingly good. James Smith is playing the Dickens-type character, Tobias Oates. He’s a truly terrific actor, one of the best I’ve worked with. And Ahunim Abebe is this young NIDA graduate who is doing a magnificent job. Then we’ve got legends like Jacqy Philips, who’s an Adelaide institution. So, I’m incredibly lucky.

“I hope that I’ve remained true to the spirit of the novel. That’s the objective when you’re adapting – that you capture the essence of a novel, that you capture its tone, that you capture its essential spirit.”

Adamson first contemplated becoming a playwright when he was just 16 years old and a boarder at Prince Alfred College, under the guidance of his English teacher Jane Nelson. It all stemmed from an assignment they were asked to write, The 18th Summer, for the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

“The idea was to write a scene that dramatised what might happen in the future and I remember being quite excited by the idea of that,” he says. “I remember when I was writing that I just understood something quite basic about dramatic writing, which is that a character can say,  ‘yes’, but the audience understands that they mean ‘no’.

“So, I was 16, but I just got that kind of feeling of what we call subtext. I just completely understood that a character can put on a mask, or a character can lie, a character can pretend, and the audience gets the richness of that, they can see through the mask, they can lift the mask and see underneath. And that was kind of a revelation to me.

Mark Saturno and co-star James Smith in Jack Maggs. Photo: Claudio Raschella

“I explored that in that scene, and then my teacher was incredibly encouraging about that piece of work. So, I wanted to interrogate the world. It’s all those things. Why are we here?  Putting a mirror up to nature and trying to find meaning in life. I felt confident that the means by which I could possibly do that was by writing dialogue.”

After studying a history degree at the University of Adelaide, and taking to the stage as an actor for a local amateur theatre company, Adamson relocated to London to try his hand at writing. He remembers printing out his first play, Clocks and Whistles, and sending it to London’s Bush Theatre in 1996. The theatre had a principle back then of reading every play that came in.

“So, I knew that it would be read, and I didn’t really have any expectation that I would ever hear back, but I did.

“That was the beginning of it, and it was a bit of a fairytale beginning in a way, because I got a reply from them quite quickly, and I went in for a meeting. I got on really well with the artistic director,  Dominic Dromgoole, who was very supportive of my career, and we’ve worked together a few times. So it was a good start.”

Since those early days, Adamson has worked consistently, carving out an impressive career that has included working with singer Tori Amos on a musical, The Light Princess, at London’s National Theatre. He penned an adaptation of the Pedro Almodóvar film All About My Mother at the Old Vic Theatre which also played at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

“I’ve just had two plays that I’m very proud of on at a theatre in London called Kiln. One was a play called Wife and the other was a play called The Ballad of Hattie and James, and both of those were real career highlights for me, that were just stories that I really wanted to tell. I had terrific casts, and that’s a really brilliant theatre.”

Being back in town for Jack Maggs has meant an extended stay for Adamson, who was keen to be back home for longer than his usual four-week holiday.

While there are fleeting thoughts of moving back for good – to be closer to his family, including parents Scott and Mary Ann, brother David (who is married to Adelaide media identity Jessica Adamson), and sister Sally – it’s likely London will remain home for a while yet.

“I’m quite busy in the UK. I’ve got several commitments that will see me through for the next two or three years, but I love it here. I think I love it more than I used to.

“So there’s always a pullback, and there’s always a kind of fantasy of living in this place with great weather, great food, great wine, great people. But it depends on my partner Richard, as well. But, you know, it’s just a question that never goes away.

“I’ve got nephews and nieces and every time I come here, they look completely different because they’ve just shot up, or their lives just changed so quickly at that age. And so there’s always a sense that you’re slightly missing out on things, even with Skype and Zoom, but the fact of the matter is, it’s the tyranny of distance . It is a long, long way. I mean, making the choice to live there [in the UK], you are making a sacrifice.

“I just try to stop and smell the roses and appreciate that I’m here and I have the opportunity to be doing what I love doing, to tell stories in the theatre which is really the only place I’m happy. I’m not interested in writing film or television. It’s the theatre that gets me going and it’s a real privilege to be there.”

State Theatre Company of South Australia is presenting Jack Maggs at the Dunstan Playhouse from November 15-30.