Do the client using in a Perl terminal (curses) application using Curses or POE::Wheel::Curses just to prove you're hardcore...

Seriously, though, I'd do the client in Java (for portability and the GUI capabilities) and the server in Perl - you should be able to find a messaging protocol that's been implemented in both (BEEP is a possibility, although it may be overkill) or in C (in which case you can use SWIG to wrapper it in both languages).