The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Sam Wright’s 2016 adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock left me with one question. Why? The novel (1967) is well read, and the film of 1975 is much loved. What was the pulse that propelled this incredibly overwrought piece of theatre?
The STC has marketed this production as unsettling and ethereal. It is certainly dogged in its violent energy but fails to produce any emotional connection with the mysterious and or ethereal. The soundscape (James Brown) has some lovely touches - insect sounds, the movement of water and the rumblings of the bush - but it ultimately overwhelms.
I always use the shouting mannerism of Contessa Treffone as my measure of the loudest form of declamation that my ears can survive without permanent damage. In this production she is surrounded by shouters, and to her credit her performance of the English lad, Mike Fitzherbert, who becomes obsessed with Miranda and the lost girls, can be described as effective and low key.
The opening of the adaption has all the actors on stage - schoolgirls ala Charles Blackman- as narrators, setting the scene for the mystery, like a Shakespearean chorus. This is a very long section, a narration that engenders some interest when characters and characterisation are shared across the classroom, but it does drag itself into regimentation. At this point, we fear the whole night might be narrated. The schoolgirls seem to have the greatest success in imitating Albert. Lorinda May Merripor gave solid support across the evening to multiple roles.
The young characters were asked to impersonate a range of character. Olivia De Jonge failed to deliver the drunken complexity of Mrs Appleyard – and shouted her way through much of the ext. In this schoolyard impersonation, the decay of her character was beyond her grasp. She did capture in the early stages of her assumption the waspish English provincialism of the headmistress and failure to conquer girls and land.
Masego Pitso was fascinating as Sarah, almost like an enervated rag doll, who refused to surrender to the stifling artificiality of corseted English refinement: bereft without her Miranda but resisting to the end.
The design (Elizabeth Gadsby) focussed on a lighting box – with huge surtitles projecting chapter headings from the novel. The stage was effectively littered with a thick layer of leaves. The stifling heart of the picnic day with its hungry ants was nicely established, through the lighting design (Trent Suidgeest)
The horror movie thrill of Irma’s rediscovery and the taunting of her amnesiac response to her trauma by the remaining girls was full of prickly frisson. Kirsty Marillier evoked Irma’s social demise with brisk elegance.
At times, it felt as though Ian Michael’s direction wanted to summon the horror ambience of the disintegrating souls that populate The Lord of the Flies. His enclosed order of young women is full of violent energy as they play their deadly theatre games. He does, however, succeed in giving us the expressed idea that the rock looms as a magnetic presence, like a giant footprint that denounces terra nullius, overwhelming European niceties.
The adaptation and the direction structured scene and narrative with layers that blared unending angst and frisson, all without light and shade. Rapidness was everything, alongside loud repetitive rhythms, as though the mystery was a voodoo dance that must pound on relentlessly. There were no dreamlike qualities. Ultimately it had the ambience of a Gothic Rock Opera.
In the end the adaptation ran out of stark and brutal variations – the display of energy defeated itself. The play whimpered to its conclusion while our care for these characters had dissipated somewhat earlier.
A disappointing evening in the theatre.
Sydney Theatre Company, Drama House, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, 18 March, 2025
Gar Jones
The STC has marketed this production as unsettling and ethereal. It is certainly dogged in its violent energy but fails to produce any emotional connection with the mysterious and or ethereal. The soundscape (James Brown) has some lovely touches - insect sounds, the movement of water and the rumblings of the bush - but it ultimately overwhelms.
I always use the shouting mannerism of Contessa Treffone as my measure of the loudest form of declamation that my ears can survive without permanent damage. In this production she is surrounded by shouters, and to her credit her performance of the English lad, Mike Fitzherbert, who becomes obsessed with Miranda and the lost girls, can be described as effective and low key.
The opening of the adaption has all the actors on stage - schoolgirls ala Charles Blackman- as narrators, setting the scene for the mystery, like a Shakespearean chorus. This is a very long section, a narration that engenders some interest when characters and characterisation are shared across the classroom, but it does drag itself into regimentation. At this point, we fear the whole night might be narrated. The schoolgirls seem to have the greatest success in imitating Albert. Lorinda May Merripor gave solid support across the evening to multiple roles.
The young characters were asked to impersonate a range of character. Olivia De Jonge failed to deliver the drunken complexity of Mrs Appleyard – and shouted her way through much of the ext. In this schoolyard impersonation, the decay of her character was beyond her grasp. She did capture in the early stages of her assumption the waspish English provincialism of the headmistress and failure to conquer girls and land.
Masego Pitso was fascinating as Sarah, almost like an enervated rag doll, who refused to surrender to the stifling artificiality of corseted English refinement: bereft without her Miranda but resisting to the end.
The design (Elizabeth Gadsby) focussed on a lighting box – with huge surtitles projecting chapter headings from the novel. The stage was effectively littered with a thick layer of leaves. The stifling heart of the picnic day with its hungry ants was nicely established, through the lighting design (Trent Suidgeest)
The horror movie thrill of Irma’s rediscovery and the taunting of her amnesiac response to her trauma by the remaining girls was full of prickly frisson. Kirsty Marillier evoked Irma’s social demise with brisk elegance.
At times, it felt as though Ian Michael’s direction wanted to summon the horror ambience of the disintegrating souls that populate The Lord of the Flies. His enclosed order of young women is full of violent energy as they play their deadly theatre games. He does, however, succeed in giving us the expressed idea that the rock looms as a magnetic presence, like a giant footprint that denounces terra nullius, overwhelming European niceties.
The adaptation and the direction structured scene and narrative with layers that blared unending angst and frisson, all without light and shade. Rapidness was everything, alongside loud repetitive rhythms, as though the mystery was a voodoo dance that must pound on relentlessly. There were no dreamlike qualities. Ultimately it had the ambience of a Gothic Rock Opera.
In the end the adaptation ran out of stark and brutal variations – the display of energy defeated itself. The play whimpered to its conclusion while our care for these characters had dissipated somewhat earlier.
A disappointing evening in the theatre.
Sydney Theatre Company, Drama House, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, 18 March, 2025
Gar Jones
