One step at a time as girls who vanished tell their own stories
Hypnotic staging of adaptation of Lindsay’s 1967 haunting novel
quintet take on all roles in an atmosphere of looming hysteria played out on the expanse of designer Zoe Wilkinson’s perspective-shifting interior. As Hanging Rock itself becomes “a carbuncle in this anti Eden” as it is so evocatively described as at one point, the tight-lipped emotional desolation of head teacher Mrs Appleyard is offset by the burgeoning and unstoppable sexual awakening of the girls, led by dreamy Miranda.
The formally choreographed stage pictures at moments resemble something Pina Bausch might have dreamed up. Flashes of wordless shadow play lean more towards the tricks of Victorian horrors. The splintered score of composer Ash Gibson Greig and creepy noises off provided by sound designer J. David Franzke heighten the mood.
On stage throughout the play’s slow burning 85 minutes, Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabben and Nikki Shiels become teenage shape-shifters trying on identities for size beyond the walls that contain them. There is much going on here too, about the mysteries of a landscape that has lived several lives more than those who try to tame it. When the girls line the stage once more in a production that is as devastating as it is delicate, it as if they are taking a leap into an irresistible void in an experience designed to beguile.
Theatre