There's only one question to which everyone wants the answer: can Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss cut the mustard? The short answer is that they prove as potent a combination on stage as at the box office. But, for all the excellence of their performances, and Ian Rickson's ministrations as director, nothing will persuade me that Lillian Hellman's 1934 play is any more than well-intentioned melodrama.
- Until 30 April
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What is Hellman actually writing about? At first glance, it seems her subject is false accusation of the kind Arthur Miller was to develop more fully in The Crucible. Karen and Martha, long-time friends who've set up a school on a Massachusetts farm, find themselves charged by a vengeful pupil, Mary, of being secret lovers. But it takes a long first act to set up the situation and one is astonished at the ease with which Mary is believed. It doesn't help that Bryony Hannah plays her as a restless psychopath whom you wouldn't trust to give the time of day: one wishes her evil intent sprang from a chilling quietude instead of being frantically signalled.
Hellman's play acquires dramatic momentum in the second half: she writes well on the corrupting effect of false witness, and there is a particularly poignant scene between Karen and her fiance, Joe, in which every word they utter seems contaminated. But, having set up a play about a society which punishes the innocent, Hellman changes tack and writes a play about moral and sexual guilt. I won't spoil the ending for future customers, but you have to trust me that the play comes to an improbably melodramatic conclusion.
Rickson does his level best to overcome the deficiencies in the text. He virtually rewrites the opening scene to suggest the school is filled with incipient sexual hysteria, and even has the girls rehearsing Antony and Cleopatra rather than The Merchant of Venice as in the original. He also shrewdly lays the psychological ground for the conclusion.
Elisabeth Moss, captivating as Peggy in Mad Men, firmly establishes Martha as the dominant partner. Her body arches with tension when she realises her annual holiday with Karen will be shared with Joe, and there is a great moment when, left alone, she stares at a table in rueful stillness. Moss's achievement, in fact, is to combine the everyday busyness of a working teacher with subtle hints she has a suppressed longing that transcends mere friendship. In an outstanding performance, she lends Martha a dark secretiveness which goes some way to prepare us for the violent turnaround of Hellman's climax.
Keira Knightley has the equally challenging task of making Karen more than the cipher she first appears. But she is excellent in her climactic encounter with her fiance, well played by Tobias Menzies, when her lean, elegant frame suddenly seems rigid with physical anguish. And, when she claims "everything I say to you is made to mean something else", Knightley radiates a lonely despair.
In fact, the acting throughout is a source of pleasure. Carol Kane turns Martha's aunt, a onetime thesp turned teacher, into a whimsically batty version of Miss Jean Brodie, and Ellen Burstyn as the evil Mary's doting grandmother almost manages to persuade us that she would have swallowed a tissue of lies.
Everything possible, including Mark Thompson's blue clapboard schoolroom set, is done to make the play work. But nothing can disguise the fact this is a flawed piece, in which Hellman can't decide whether she is writing about the corrosiveness of false accusation or the power of buried sexual passion.
Comments in chronological order (Total 72 comments)
10 February 2011 1:07AM
Well, that's a relief. I was beginning to feel idiotic for paying £75 a piece for Stalls tickets to see a lesbian melodrama.
10 February 2011 1:08AM
write
10 February 2011 1:42AM
Ha ha.
Very carefully put sub-ed...
10 February 2011 2:29AM
What a great review. Thanks.
Its tells me about the performances, the production and the play without giving away endings.
Everything I need to know before deciding to see it or not, except price but that can be found elsewhere. For complete convienience i suppose you could add a link.
10 February 2011 3:41AM
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10 February 2011 4:46AM
It was a nice enough movie where Shirley MacLaine acted Audrey Hepburn off the screen, as I remember it.
10 February 2011 7:22AM
I went to see this last week and walked out at the interval. Utterly terrible.
10 February 2011 7:38AM
as potent a combination on stage as at the box office
I'm a bit slow today - does this mean that tickets for the show are selling well, and the question is if they live up to people's expectations? Or is it a reference to the cinema box office?
10 February 2011 8:09AM
Dreadful, depressing, joyless play! So Clause 28!
A super remedy for The Children's Hour (or The Loudest Whisper the film version) is the German film made in the early 1930s Maechden in Uniform. Rather charming, but they wouldn't make it today, as quite rightly school teachers have to avoid romantic contact with pupils. The film astounds me all the same, such fresh happiness just before the rise of the III Reich.
10 February 2011 8:27AM
Well I paid 85 each and plus booking fee so you are better off :)
10 February 2011 8:39AM
Good balanced review, glad you haven't fallen for the temptation of star bashing that The Daily Hate and Telegraph couldn't resist.......
10 February 2011 8:49AM
Jesus that's a lot of money.
10 February 2011 8:54AM
Oh and I agree, well worth seeing. I was moved to tears for most of the second half even whilst questioning the melodrama.
And why publicize paying some tout £15 / £25 over the odds? top price on the theatre website is £60, you'd only pay the small handling charge to the big online agencies, and you could get tickets, even in the stalls, for much less. You wouldn't really expect it to be cheap to see a well produced and directed play featuring world famous stars, but if you choose to pay some third party a nice fat profit it's irrelevent to the review.
10 February 2011 9:02AM
Good review, matches my experience very well. I felt the performances and setting were universally good but I think one of the directorial choices was questionable.
The first half was seriously flawed for me because I (inevitably) knew what was coming and the choice to play Mary as a maniac rather than a clever and manipulative socio-path.
metatastic - shame you left, the second half was much better than the first
10 February 2011 9:15AM
@kaff
Your IMDB link is to a 1930s version of Maedchen in Uniform. (?)
Do you know the film with the magnificent Therese Giehse as the disciplinarian headmistress and Lilli Palmer as the stoic teachre suffering the unwanted attentions of Romy Schneider?
It is rightly considered a classic in Germany. Must've been shot in the 1950s or 60s ...
This film was adapted into a stage play in recent years, which was a critical success, too - as far as I know.
The premise of Maedchen in Uniform is slightly different to The Children's Hour, though, since in Maedchen, a young pupil at an all-girls boarding school in early 19th century Germany falls head over heels in love with her teacher and doesn't keep stumm about it, at all.
10 February 2011 9:18AM
Saw it last week and this about sums up my opinion. The play is not a great one, and doesn't have enough depth, but the acting is great and worth seeing for that alone.
10 February 2011 9:25AM
Wanchai - the Telegraph gave it a better review!
10 February 2011 9:26AM
the play was dated when it was written,the acting is rubbish apart from burnstyn..save 70 quid hire the 1962 wyler film..great performaces from maclaine and the little girl is very believable
10 February 2011 9:42AM
@Bjerkley but they ran an article over the weekend saying that the audience preferred the young girl over the stars, based largely on the critical skills of a hedge fund manager! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-news/8306046/Virtual-unknown-set-to-shine-alongside-Keira-Knightley-and-Mad-Mens-Elisabeth-Moss.html
10 February 2011 9:45AM
I definitely came away thinking the play was heavily flawed - the moment that cracks began to appear in Mary's story any sensible adult would have seen through it and the plot device that allows her story to stand up is very weak.
However the use of Antony and Cleopatra (me not realising this was an amendment from the original text) was very clever - any joke that can be made out of a slight sexual innuendo, teenagers will jump on - and the idea that teenage girls have been secretly passing around risque books at school rings true with me (remembering Judy Blume when I was at school and my mum telling me that all the girls at her school had been passing round a copy of Lady Chatterley *before* the ban was lifted).
So the idea of the school being in a state of sexual hysteria worked well for me, just a shame that the plot was so unbalanced (and how slow that first half dragged, with Aunt Lily's scenes taking up almost as much time as Martha and Karen).
I thought Keira and Elisabeth both did pretty well...was especially impressed at Keira Knightley's accent...how weird that at times she sounded more authentically American than her US co-star? Some of the other accents a bit more shaky...
10 February 2011 9:58AM
I think keira knightley's a terrible actress personally. She's rubbish unless she's playing a posh english girl... oh wait. No she played a posh english girl in pirates of the carribean and she was crap in that
10 February 2011 10:02AM
K K is a miserable actcor. Still in a paper bag, cant act out of it.
10 February 2011 10:03AM
I want to like Keira, I really do. She seems like a lovely person/she works hard etc BUT, I still cannot bear to watch her. Perhaps slightly better on stage than on screen, but still incredibly annoying. That ridiculous pouting/sultry expression she wears in every role is just not necessary!
It's a shame that so many talented actors out there and yet they will never get a chance to shine....
10 February 2011 10:19AM
My exact feelings on Keira Knightley. There isn't anything inherently wrong with her acting that I can see and she seems to choose good roles, but she is an astonishingly annoying screen presence. That expression she wears and the fact that she seem all too well aware of her beauty just grates and I can never forget I'm watching Keira Knightley.
I suppose this could be remedied on stage, if you sat near the back of the theatre.
I'd have to question anyone that pays £85 to watch a play just because it has someone famous in it. Presumably this is the only reason.
10 February 2011 10:22AM
I used to resent Keira Knightley but now I love her.
10 February 2011 10:22AM
I REALLY love her.
10 February 2011 10:27AM
They can act, they make a living from it, they're doing fine.
Good review, MB. You can review, you make a living from it, you're doing fine.
10 February 2011 10:32AM
@ Kaff and Growltiger00: neither versions seem to be available on Lovefilm, which is a shame, since you've whetted my appetite. Would they have alternate titles, do you know? I've tried looking under Girls in Uniform, but something quite different comes up...
10 February 2011 10:37AM
By the way, it is a lot of money of course, but have you any idea how much people pay to watch football? And that's on a far more regular basis that most theatregoers go to the theatre.
10 February 2011 10:51AM
Impossibly crude and mean little play that somehow nudges past two hours with very little happening.
The only other thing I've seen Rickson direct is Jerusalem, which, for all its merits, doesn't exactly have a lot of light and shade: it blasts out at you the whole time. Rickson seems to have taken the same principle to heart here, with results that are both tiresome and exhausting.
10 February 2011 10:51AM
Right. So - precis: Acting great, production great, direction great. But three stars, because you don't like the script. Far be it from me, the humble layman to object, but surely this being a revival, why not review the talent involved, rather than the script? Bottom line, anyone remotely interested in the play's summary will in all likelihood have a great time.
10 February 2011 10:53AM
The purpose of a theatre review that isn't of a new play surely is to rate the performance, and not the text?
For a new play I'd venture the text is as up for scrutiny as the performance, but if the text is already well-established, the purpose of a review is to rate this performance (perhaps in relation to past ones).
10 February 2011 10:53AM
I'm still a bit stuck on what the title actually means...does 'The Children's Hour' mean the hour of free time when the children get to play/gossip which leads to the opportunity for the rumour to spread? I heard a reference in the script to the 'Elecution hour' but not the 'Children's Hour'.
10 February 2011 10:54AM
How so? I'd have thought an "impossibly crude little play" would be Blasted, I very much doubt this sinks to its excesses...
10 February 2011 11:04AM
Funny that Audrey Hepburn played the Keira role in the film as I've always thought them rather similar - both beautiful clothes horses, amazing cheekbones, adored by many, but in my opinion both absolutely rubbish actors.
I'm surprised that such a dated play got such a big revival and personally would pay good money (though maybe not as much as £85!) not to sit through it.
10 February 2011 11:15AM
Keira is so beautiful it's a bit unnecessary for her to be a good actor.
10 February 2011 11:15AM
I paid very much less than this and really enjoyed it:
http://trumpetfantastic.blogspot.com/
10 February 2011 11:16AM
I can't get enough of Keira Knightley
But I think she needs a take more risks, at moment she needs take roles that are outside her comfort zone.
10 February 2011 11:18AM
I know I should not have paid that amount. I could have gone to holiday in Cyprus or Turkey for a week !!!
Silly me!!
10 February 2011 11:18AM
benmorse
Depends what the purpose of the review is. If it's an overall guide, then the text is relevant. I didn't know the play beforehand, thought the acting and production were great, but came away thinking that the play itself was flawed. If it had been given a 5 star review, it wouldn't accurately reflect the overall experience.
10 February 2011 11:22AM
Ribena
Unlike many other shows where no one has any interest in who's performing in it. There's a lot of sneering going on when a filmstar is in a play, but realistically, who is in the cast is always going to be part of the draw, whether they're a respected theatre actor or a film star. It's just snobbery to only highlight it when it's a film star (and so interesting half the comments here don't seem to have seen the play).
Although I wasn't a KK fan before I went and didn't go to see her specifcally, but thought the entire cast seemed interesting. But her performance was good, and it was easy enough to believe the character, rather than seeing the film star there.
10 February 2011 11:33AM
A quick reply to benmorse and others about my three stars. I've always argued that star-ratings are somewhat arbitrary. But a text is a vital part of the experience. So a mediocre play well done, which this is, is a three-star, rather than four-star, event. The same would go for a fine play ill served by its director or cast.
By the way, I think the hostility some people show to Keira Knightley is undeserved. In the two appearances she's made on the West End stage, she's shown she can more than hold her own. It's not her fault that Hellman's character doesn't really come alive until the final act.
10 February 2011 11:34AM
@capoerialover
Knightley's been rubbish in everything I have had the misfortune to see her in.
A weak play such as The Children's Hour is not helped by putting weak actors in it.
10 February 2011 11:38AM
People generally sneering that Keira is an 'annoying' actress usually mean she's been in some irritatingly poor films, notably Pirates 2 and 3, or that she's too slim and pretty to be likeable.
Personally I'm more annoyed at people who just put down a young, sensible seeming woman, who's managed to become a national star through acting instead of getting breast implants, a drug habit, sleeping with rock stars, or taking her clothes off in public.
Personally I thought she was great in Bend it like Beckham, Pride and Prejudice, The Duchess, Edge of Love, and The Misanthrope...
10 February 2011 11:39AM
@R042
I haven't seen Blasted, so I can't compare, but The Children's Hour has a kind of bagpipe approach to drama: it inflates itself mightily and then blares its themes at you for two-and-a-half hours. Things happen, but nothing develops; things change, but only to become more explicit. You can see how it's going to end almost from the start.
That doesn't necessarily sink a play: tragedies need to have a ring of inevitability about them. My problem with The Children's Hour is that it has a false inevitability: it's jerryrigged to seem tragic. Billington puts his finger on it when he notes the ease with which the false accusations are accepted: the first act curtain comes down precisely when (in real life) people would be saying, 'Well, wait a minute ... this doesn't make sense.'
10 February 2011 11:53AM
My god you should work on your insults before putting them on the internet, otherwise you just end up looking like a moron.
10 February 2011 12:00PM
That's an interesting concept of false inevitability - one could argue the Greeks fell victim to it in a play like "The Bacchae" where the situation is admitted as being purely artificially created.
I think to take a later example "Much Ado About Nothing" satirises the idea - the "ease with which the false accusations are accepted" could easily deal with Hero's claimed infidelity!
Concerning "Blasted", it's a very different beast - its "crude" nature comes from explicit sexual and violent acts, plenty of swearing and truly loathsome main characters. Sarah Kane's a difficult playwright to enjoy - but one has to appreciate her audacity.
10 February 2011 12:05PM
@kaff:
[quote]"Dreadful, depressing, joyless play! So Clause 28!
A super remedy for The Children's Hour (or The Loudest Whisper the film version) is the German film made in the early 1930s Maechden in Uniform. Rather charming, but they wouldn't make it today, as quite rightly school teachers have to avoid romantic contact with pupils. The film astounds me all the same, such fresh happiness just before the rise of the III Reich."[/quote]
Couldn't agree more on both points. I watched the original Hepburn/MacLaine film as a young --closeted & struggling-- teenager and absolutely hated it. Clicheed, homophobic rubbish. Avoid, along with The Killing of Sister George et al.
10 February 2011 12:18PM
Ribena,
It is not my first time going to a play and whenever I go I paid min. 65 pp.
We are gonna see it cause it was banned bla bla so I wondered why exactly it is nothing to do with Keira as I am not a lesbian.
Sometimes art deserves to be paid.
Well I hope it's gonna be a good one.
10 February 2011 12:39PM
The prices, especially the premium tickets (an unpleasant recent development in the West End), are really steep. Consequently I'll give it a miss, though I personally think Keira Knightley can act and am keen on Mad Men. I'd just prefer to go and see two or three interesting productions in theatres outside the West End. Or even four.