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The Theatreguide.London Review
The Children's Hour
Comedy Theatre Spring 2011
Lillian
Hellman's 1934 drama shows how the malicious lie of an evil and deeply
disturbed child can destroy the lives of everyone around her.
Though the old melodramatic machine may creak a bit at moments and the
subject of the lie - lesbianism - not have quite the shock power it once
had, the play is still a powerful indictment of unleashed evil and mob
prejudice, and a moving study of minds and souls crumbling under
pressure.
It is also - and this will be of far more interest to a large part of
the audience - an effective vehicle for a movie star and a TV star.
And those who
come just to see Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss will get the bonus
of two other familiar faces, Ellen Burstyn and Carol Kane, as well as
the introduction to a potential new star, Bryony Hannah.
Knightley and Moss play the co-owners of a small girls' school, at which
Hannah is their most problematic pupil. In a fit of pique the girl makes
a charge against them that she herself does not fully understand.
Her rich and
influential grandmother believes her, and the women's careers and lives
are ruined. And then, cracking under the pressure, one of them begins to
wonder if the charge was true.
Though the issues the play raises transcend the sexual and remain
relevant, the real power of the play lies in the character studies andt
he acting opportunities they provide.
As directed by Ian Rickson, Keira Knightley plays the stronger-willed
victim with what seems at first like cool composure, but is soon
revealed to be the tight self-control of one living every day on her
nerves' ends, in a constant fight, both before and after the crisis,
against hysteria.
It's a battle
the character generally wins, but Knightley makes us aware of the
soul-draining cost.
Elisabeth Moss plays her friend as more open to her emotions from the
start, so that extremes of anger or despair are a shorter journey for
her, and it is thus sadly ironic that she is the one who cracks and
discovers (or thinks she discovers) emotions she hadn't known she was
feeling.
The big discovery of the evening is relative newcomer Bryony Hannah as
the girl, capturing all the bullying power, egocentricity, near-madness
and pure malice while still letting us see the deeply disturbed and
unhappy child beneath the villain.
The other three major roles in the play are more plot functions than
fully developed characters, and it is much to the credit of actors and
director that they flesh them out as fully as they do.
Ellen Burstyn
can't quite make the grandmother as tragic a figure as she tries, though
she does succeed in moving her into the camp of the victims rather than
villains.
Carol Kane's role, of an eccentric aunt, is there just to be a
distracting extra burden to the central characters, and she fulfils it
without being able to make the woman real or relevant.
Tobias Menzies
does more than you'd expect with the badly underwritten role of
Knightley's fiancé, as a man completely out of his depth and trying
desperately to do the right thing.
A fault in this production that lies partly in the script but more in
Ian Rickman's direction is that too much is given away far too quickly,
depriving us of uncertainties and ambiguities that would be more
dramatically satisfying.
Elisabeth Moss is directed to look adoringly at Knightley throughout the
opening scenes, Carol Kane is too obviously nothing more than comic
relief, and Bryony Hannah enters so close to barking mad that there is
little place for the character or actress to go.
For some reason dialect coach Joan Washington has given most of the cast
New York ethnic accents, so they sound more like extras from The
Sopranos than residents of a New England village.
Gerald Berkowitz
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