Suffer the children
by
Michael Dresdner
Making
entertainment of something as darkly disturbing and emotionally charged as The Children’s Hour is no mean feat. Nevertheless,
director John Munn pulled together some wonderful actors on a cleverly
innovative set to offer up a moving, if upsetting, evening of serious drama at Lakewood Playhouse.
Apparently
based on a chillingly similar event that occurred in Scotland in 1810, this 1934
play, which was Lillian Hellman’s first successful work, is set in a girls’ boarding
school run by two women. Karen Wright (Maggie Lofquist) has been putting off
her beau, Dr. Joseph Cardin (Paul Richter) for years in order to work with
close friend Martha Dobie (Deya Ozburn) to get their school off the ground.
Martha’s cross to bear is her loose-lipped, critical aunt, Lily Mortar (Laura
Kessler), whose claim to fame is a somewhat embellished theatre career and
whose personal mission is to force etiquette onto the school’s girls.
One of
the girls, Mary Tilford (Kira Zinck), is a spoiled, duplicitous bully who runs
away to the home of her influential dowager grandmother (Carol Richmond). Mary tells
her grandmother that the two schoolmarms are having a lesbian affair. Grandma
makes calls, and overnight, all the students are removed from school.
When Rosalie
(Gabriela Aleman), a mousy classmate with a secret to hide, arrives at the
house, Mary blackmails her into corroborating the lie. After a failed slander
suit and damning publicity, both the school and the women’s personal lives
collapse into complete wreckage. When the truth finally comes to light, it is too
late be of any help, as the lie has destroyed all of the adults it touched.
Anchoring
the play were outstanding portrayals by the two schoolmarms. Lofquist was exceptional
as the stolid, caring Wright, in love with the doctor but loyal to her students
and colleague. Ozburn offered up a first-rate profile of Dobie, first pushed to
the brink by her loquaciously critical aunt, then un-hinged by the destruction
created by Mary’s lie.
The girls
making up the student body formed an excellent ensemble supporting cast, led by
two standouts. Zinck did a superb job crafting a convincingly conniving Mary,
swinging from put-upon innocent to self-centered bully in the wink of an eye. Backing
her up was Aleman’s equally fine portrayal of the timidly insecure and easily
manipulated Rosalie.
Along
with mood enhancing lighting, Judy Cullen provided a very clever set, beautifully
painted by Kim Izenman, consisting primarily of a central, two-tiered mesa as
the main acting space. Its proscribed top lent an appropriately forced intimacy
to the many emotional scenes. The surrounding second tier provided imagined
hallways and anterooms where entering and exiting actors could be seen by the
audience, but not, in our imaginations, by the players in the center. Normal
doors in oversized frames at the two corners insinuated a false perspective, helping
us establish the mental image of a large, rambling farmhouse.
Much of
the costuming by Kelli McGowan was spot on, from the matronly garb on Dobie and
Wright to the varied, yet consistent, school uniforms on the girls. However, there
were some odd choices. Joseph seemed too primly coiffed and clad for a working doctor
and the aunt and the dowager appeared underdressed; the former too sedately for
her pretensions and the latter too modestly for her station.
Great
drama, and this fine production qualifies, entertains not with frivolous
distraction but with emotional upheaval. When you go to see The Children’s Hour, and you should, gird
yourself for what is coming, and go with the assurance that your emotions will
be torqued through a buffeting but worthwhile journey.
The Children’s Hour
Jan 11 to Feb 3, 2013
Lakewood
Playhouse
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