“When a lie spins out of control … Great play, wonderful cast, and terrific direction.”
Julia Newbould
4.5 Stars
Venue Old Fitz
Sydney
Dates Until March 1st
When a lie spins out of control.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies shows great understanding of the politics of a group of boys behaving without supervision. In The Children’s Hour, author Lillian Hellman shows that girls are no better – what they lack in brawn and physical survival skills they make up for in cunning and spite.
Lillian Hellman wrote this play in 1934, and while it is dated in certain aspects, the damage that spite and lies can cause is no less relevant today.
The Children’s Hour is set in a small farmland community, where two young college friends Martha Dobie (Jess Bell) and Karen Wright (Romney Hamilton) have set up and run a school for wealthy young girls.
One of the students is Mary Tilford (Kim Clifton), a spoilt young girl brought up by her rich society grandmother. It is established early that she is a liar, skips class, feigns illness, bullies and blackmails her fellow schoolgirls. It is after she is punished for being an hour late to class that she decides she will run away, so she contrives a plan to win the sympathy of her besotted grandmother Amelia (Annie Byron) to ensure she never has to return.
Putting together snippets of gossip she has gathered from the other girls, who overheard a conversation between Martha and her mooch of an aunt (Deborah Jones), and using information from a scandalous book she has hidden in her room, she tells her grandmother that Martha and Karen have had “unnatural” relations.
Tiny Dog Productions & Dead Fly Productions have assembled a large cast – seven schoolgirls – all excellent, but most outstanding is Mary. Clifton plays Mary with an air of entitlement and a chilling undertone of evil. The opening scenes is perfectly choreographed, with the girls all going about their girlish activities – which, 90 years ago, consisted of playing with each other’s hair, sewing, and reading Shakespeare.
Each one reflects the schoolgirl mannerisms perfectly.
The older women in the cast particularly hark back to the melodramatic stars of 1930s films – Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, and Joan Crawford – and steal all their scenes.
Martha’s aunt, who has been living off her niece and teaching at the school, has very
much adopted the manner of Miriam Hopkins who played her in the 1961 film adaption, which starred Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine as Karen and Martha respectively. She plays ditzy, calculating, and mean. Byron plays Mary’s grandmother sympathetically through a wide range of emotions – starting with her no-nonsense attitude of not putting up with Mary’s antics, to imperiousness in believing her grand-daughter wholeheartedly, being unswayed by the pleas and arguments of the teachers and Joe, to being proud yet apologetic to Karen. She is a wronged party, too, and by the play’s end understands it.
Costume designer Hannah Yardley has done an excellent job – from the delicate school uniforms to the refined outfits of the aunt, grandmother, and doctor.
Dr Joe, Karen’s fiancé, played by Mike Booth, enters the drama in a sharply cut suit
that creates his character even before he perfectly inhabits it. Standout of the night in an all-round terrific cast was Jess Bell as Martha. She was powerful as Martha – and we felt all her emotions.
Although almost a century old, the play is still relevant today. While reputations are unlikely to be sullied by gay slurs in modern day Sydney, there are still examples of where people can have their reputations and lives damaged by malicious lies.
Several audience members were brought to tears.
Great play, wonderful cast, and terrific direction. Take a bow, director Kim Hardwick. You breathed new life into an old, well-written text and delivered it to a new and appreciative audience.
4.5 gold stars
photography by Phil Erbacher
Julia Newbould, Theatre Now
