TimeLine director Nick Bowling
powers remarkable production of controversial 1934 classic
by Barbara Vitello
Critic at Large
published November 10, 2006
The Children's Hour is provocative. It's timely. And in the hands of an astute storyteller like director Nick Bowling, it makes for astonishing theater.
Bowling leaves an indisputable imprint on TimeLine Theatre's remarkable production of Lillian Hellman's once (and still) controversial 1934 play. (Its implied homosexuality kept the Pulitzer Prize committee from seeing it and resulted in a Chicago ban that lasted 19 years).
Bowling's touch is especially evident in the revelatory second act. It's a blazing, highly stylized series of shrewdly realized scenes marked by inspired direction; sensitive performances by Mechelle Moe and Halena Kays; and Jesse Klug's concentrated lighting that bathes the actors in harsh white, while surrounding them with ominous black.
Bowling emphasizes the character's psychological and emotional torment in a subtle, discriminating way. He telescopes the evocative second act so that events unfold not sequentially as they do in the script, but over the course of several days in order to reveal the slow disintegration of these characters' lives. At the same time, he compresses several scenes, playing them out simultaneously to reveal the complex, highly charged relationship between these characters. Yet Bowling keeps you guessing as to the nature of these relationships, an artfully ambiguous interpretation that is yet another example of discerning direction.
"The love that dare not speak its name" (a euphemism for homosexuality), underscores The Children's Hour, a tragedy about the destructive power of a lie and the devastating effect of repressed love. (Significantly "lesbian," the word on everyone's mind, is the word no one speaks. Instead, it's carved into the stage floor where it remains hidden until the second act when it's revealed as an ugly, angry denunciation).
The play is also about self-denial and self-delusion. It's about cruel children and impulsive adults who unwittingly set in motion this tragedy.
Inspired by an actual court case in early 19th-century Scotland, The Children's Hour takes place during the early 1930s at a struggling boarding school for girls run by headmistresses Karen Wright (Moe) and Martha Dobie (Kays).
After Karen reprimands the spoiled, calculating Mary (an unflappable Zanny Laird as a young tyrant with an angelic appearance and a cruel heart) for lying and restricts her to school grounds, the girl accuses the women of "unnatural" behavior.
Horrified upon hearing Mary's charge, her wealthy grandmother and school benefactor Amelia Tilford (a carefully nuanced performance by Ann Wakefield) informs the other parents who promptly remove their children from the school, forcing it to close.
The lives of Karen and Martha unravel as they try to clear their names, restore their reputations and reopen their school. A trial ensues, straining the relationship between Karen and her fiance, Joe, played by a stalwart Sean Sullivan, very good as a decent and loyal man who cannot rid himself entirely of his suspicions.
Except for a few minor exceptions, the young actresses playing the students - Mia Akers, Natalie Watts, Rayna Ben-Zeev, Olivia Cygan, Laura Noigebauer, Grace Parker and Natalie Watts - deliver natural, unaffected performances. A dignified Barbara L.W. Myers plays Agatha, the housekeeper too wise too be taken in by Mary's schemes. Mary O'Dowd delivers a deft comic turn as Martha's pretentious, melodramatic Aunt Lily, a former actress reduced to performing for schoolgirls. Fleshing out the role of Amelia, Wakefield finds the sincerity in this misguided dowager whose determination to protect children has unintended results.
Then there's Laird, a self-possessed 14-year-old who does a commanding job playing a masterful manipulator. But the anguished, luminous performances by Moe and Kays dominate this production. Their acting is exquisite. They make the characters' pain palpable in a stark and eloquent way.
By the end of the play, Bowling has stripped the layers away, leaving the two women barricaded in a virtually barren house.
