THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
THE CHILDREN’S HOUR, Tiny Dog Productions & Dead Fly Productions at the Old Fitz, 14 February - 1 March 2025. Photography by Phil Erbacher
In 1934, at just 29, Lillian Hellman wrote her first play. Titled The Children’s Hour, it’s essentially about the terrible power of a lie and how unstoppably destructive its consequences are. At the time, some thought the play melodramatic but in 2025, we know differently. Now, through the once and current President, we’re aware how quickly a lie becomes the truth – a fact. And how dangerous that can be.
Hellman’s play was based on a true story from 1810 when the lives of two Edinburgh school teachers were up-ended by a pupil’s lie that they were lovers. The girl’s grandmother wrote to parents with this “news” and overnight the exclusive school was empty. The two women fought back, suing Grandma for damages, and they won.
A judge, Lord Meadowbank, opined that “sex between women is equally imaginary with witchcraft, sorcery, or carnal copulation with the devil.” Grandma appealed the verdict. After battling on for ten years, the teachers’ suit was upheld, but they were ruined. The heedless disrespect in the words of the judge – a disdainful belittling of women in general and lesbians in particular – has its equivalency now.
Directed with sensitivity and finesse by Kim Hardwick, the 13-strong cast of The Children’s Hour doesn’t put a foot wrong in the two-hour-plus interval. Simply set in the parlour-school room of cosy floral wallpaper and plain deal furniture (design Emelia Simcox, scenic artist: Russell Carey), the disciplined decency of the school mistresses and friends, Karen Wright (Jess Bell) and Martha Dobie (Romney Hamilton) is an anchoring constant amid the shape-shifting girls. Angelic and loving one minute, spiteful little monsters of betrayal and changing sides the next. They’re a painfully comical and accurate depiction of adolescent girls.
Also painfully comical, until she isn’t, is Martha’s aunt, Lily Mortar (Deborah Jones). She’s an aging actor who’s been “resting” for far too long. She intones Shakespeare to the girls in a way that can only make them loathe him forever. Every school and family has an Aunt Lily.
Also common in schools is a ringleader and bully: Mary Tilford (eerily charming and powerful Kim Clifton). She’s spoilt rotten by her doting grandmother, Mrs Amelia Tilford (brilliantly nuanced Annie Byron), and is a nasty little minx. Yet Hellman doesn’t paint her as Good or Bad. While Mary is horrid, it’s also obvious that fear and loneliness stoke her wicked impulses. Nevertheless, when she conjures up the fatal accusation and blackmails her terrified acolyte Rosalie (wide-eyed, helpless Sarah Ballantyne) to back her, it’s a blood-curdling moment.
That’s one of the striking things about both play and production as the lie’s forcefield gathers momentum and believers, and the toxic untruth engulfs all in its path. Such a simple, silly thing and yet once unleashed and out there, it runs amok among helpless victims. And, plus ça change, while kids today are finding awful stuff on the internet, the schoolgirl of 1934 found her “facts” in a book surreptitiously shared among her classmates (astonishingly fine ensemble of Amy Bloink, Miranda Huttley, Lara Kocsis, Madeline Kunstler and Kira McLennan).
Contributing to the tension are the intertwined relationships: while the girls' alliances shift like quicksand, Karen’s fiancé Joe (Mike Booth) is not only the local doctor but also Mrs Tilford’s nephew. He’s a decent, neatly-pomaded fellow but, at a crucial moment, he too reveals unconsciously shaky foundations. Meanwhile, Mrs Tilford’s all-seeing housekeeper (Martelle Hammer) balefully watches on.
It becomes clear that the lie and its snowballing effects propel all else – homophobia, deceit, petty tyranny, and fearfulness. Just as is happening every day now in the media, and – inevitably – in everyday life, it’s the lie-turned-fact that’s most destructive.
Performing rights to the play stipulate no updating, but it needs none. Costume designer Hannah Yardley evokes the 1930s, while Michael Huxley’s composition and sound design (pianist Bev Kennedy) as well as schoolgirl voices-off and pelting rain) artfully suggest 1961’s MacLaine/Hepburn movie.
The play and production are bleak, spellbinding, and beautifully realised. It’s impossible to look away from these fine actors and the story they tell. Brilliant.
