Sydney Reviews

School girls enter the stage like silhouette paper dolls from behind a prim floral scrim in Kim Hardwick’s production of Lillian Hellman’s The Children's Hour. It’s a striking and intriguing image, setting up a smart entree into this 90 year old play which still has resonance and pertinence today.

The school girls take up all manner of activities in a cosy classroom, from reading Shakespeare to sewing to reciting Latin and shearing hair under the eye and elocutionary ear of matronly Lily Mortar, a thespian whose star has faded and has been succoured by her niece, Martha, co-founder of the school with her college bestie, Karen.

Into this environment of callow camaraderie comes fellow student, Mary, flagrantly truant but bearing a floral tribute to the easily flattered Miss Mortar. Enter Karen, co head mistress, who chastises Mary for her truancy and questions the legitimacy of the bouquet. Mary’s obvious tardiness and trampling of the truth exacts a punitive action from Karen and the recalcitrant feigns a medical episode.

Dr. Joe Cardin is called, a medico who happens to be Mary’s cousin and Karen’s fiance. He calls Mary’s “heart attack” a sham. The privileged little brat and prototype Mean Girl conspires revenge.    

Comparison to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Ian McEwan’s Atonement and even the Australian classic Morning Sacrifice by Dymphna Cusack can be drawn in both theme and creative crafting.

Bullying, gossip, slander, and cancel culture are all startlingly identifiable, showing public shaming has a rich and lengthy history even before cancel culture entered the social discourse.

The casting of this play is totally on point with the supporting group of schoolgirls played by Amy Bloink, Miranda Huttley, Lara Kocsis, Madeline Kunstler and Kira McLennan all uniformly excellent.

Sarah Ballantyne as the bullied Rosalie, brutally blackmailed by Mary is emphatically empathetic, her repeated catchphrase “the devil who knows” eerily foreboding,  while Kim Clifton is wincingly convincing as the bullying manipulator, Mary.

Splendid characterisation is on show from Annie Byron as Mary’s gulled grandmother, Martelle Hammer as her prescient maid, and Deborah Jones as the tarnished thespian, Miss Mortar.

Mike Booth is a standout, not merely by virtue as the only male in the cast, but by the elegiac dignity he brings to the role.

Jess Bell as Martha and Romney Hamilton as Karen wonderfully compliment each other as the couple stigmatised and ostracised on the hearsay of a scheming child, victims of consequence culture.

Set Designer Emelia Simcox’s floral wall paper scrims are both period evocative and practically enabling, beautifully front and back lit by lighting designer, Jimi Rawlings, while costume designer, Hannah Yardley provides era appropriate and character defining wardrobe. 

Plaudits to producers Deborah Jones & Romney Hamilton for reviving Hellman’s classic of criminal injustice instigated by whim and whisper in a production that is a bang not a whimper.