Picnic at Hanging Rock

adapted by Tom Wright

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 21 February 2018

Matthew Lutton directs five actors - Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabben and Nikki Shiels - in a new stage adaptation of Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, with set and costume designs by Zoë Atkinson, lighting by Paul Jackson and sound composed by Ash Gibson Greig and designed by J. David Franzke. The production comes from Victoria's Malthouse Theatre and Western Australia's Black Swan Theatre Company.

The 1975 film directed by Peter Weir sets a standard of dreamy sensuality and atmospheric mystery which would be hard to emulate on stage. Tom Wright's adaptation approaches the subject in a completely different manner which brings its own fascinating rewards.

In a space defined by black floor and two angled black walls, with a 'surtitle' screen above to provide laconic scenic or thematic descriptions, five schoolgirls in blue tartan skirts, white shirts, blue blazers with red piping, and straw hats stand in a line and start to set the scene. One of them takes on the arch and very English tones of the eponymous Headmistress of the Appleyard School for Girls, whose pupils set out on Valentine's Day in 1900 with two teachers for a picnic at the geological curiosity of Hanging Rock on Mount Macedon in rural Victoria. Three of the pupils - Miranda, Marion and Irma - and one of the teachers disappear during the afternoon - four pupils had climbed the rock (without permission) and only Edith came back distraught; no-one can explain the disappearance of the teacher. 

This event causes repercussions, especially as the police cannot resolve the mystery. Michael, a young Englishman who was with his relatives at the Rock and who saw the girls as they began their expedition tries to find them himself - inexplicably Irma is found, but she is unable to account for herself or her friends. Meanwhile, Sara, a charity pupil left behind in disgrace at the school on the picnic day is further humiliated and abused by the increasingly desperate and deranged headmistress, and eventually she commits suicide; she has a mystical bond with her brother who happens to be the coachman at the estate where Michael is staying, but the two were separated in early childhood and do not meet face to face in the course of the play.

The staging is remarkably successful. It proceeds by a series of short scenes set as needed at the school or in the surroundings of the Hanging Rock or at the estate of Michael's wealthy relatives. Such minimal props as are needed for these scenes appear and disappear during stunningly successful blackouts, during which the actors also move, change costume where necessary (the Headmistress remains dressed as a modern schoolgirl, but the actor playing Michael appears in male clothing). The blackouts deepen the sense of mystery and tension, the discovery of the returned Irma in particular delivering a jump-out-of-the-seat surprise even if one knows the story.

It's a brilliantly effective piece of theatre superbly acted by the five young women taking part, whether they be narrating, dramatising particular scenes, taking the principal roles or just representing the other girls at the school. The set, though so dark, takes on in turn the brooding presence of the strange Australian landscape and the doomed claustrophobic school where Mrs Appleyard is disastrously failing to impose an English Eden and the social mores of Bournemouth in a place so utterly unsuited to them.