The Children's Hour - The Richard Burton Company

The Children's Hour is one of the American classic plays. It is guilty of providing, in the first half, little colour beyond the clarification of the plot points which will fuel the crisis of the unstaged trial in the second half, but characters are well-defined, and usher us into a second half which explodes into a tragedy of the decent undone by those in denial of their own guilt and recklessly devoid of empathy. As such, it is a play with which, either on a personal or political level, we cannot fail to identify.
Conceived in a world where the central issue of homosexuality could not be permitted to be mentioned on the stage, the play, in times more liberally enlightened, still stands up as a taut, hallmarked piece of drama, with urgent points to make. While there is a certain amount of fun satirising the ageing actress Lily, this is held from the facetiousness, one feels, into which an English playwright would be tempted.
The Richard Burton Company is how the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama chooses to brand it's theatre performances, and if this appears disingenuous, a case can certainly be made for it being Cardiff's repertory company. It attracts directors of note, in this case Caitlin McLeod, a trainee of the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea, and produces plays such as this which yell out to be seen, and this production at the Bute Theatre is well-performed in a cast of remarkable evenness. The relationship between the two schoolmistresses, revealed to have successively deeper layers, is, crucially, convincing, with Lucy Green and Charlotte Mulliner carrying scenes, particularly the almost Beckett-like commencement of the final scene, with conviction and stamina. Heledd Gwynn and Meg Lehmann (handicapped, in this instance by a faultless complexion), playing the older roles have other challenges, but acquit themselves well, both in their bearing and demeanour of a generation being pushed aside. Adam Pelta-Pauls, as the resolutely warm pragmatist Joseph, discharges this corker of a role with relish. Sophie Melville is so convincing as the despicable Mary Tilford that you want to strangle her.
The production is mysteriously unresonant. There is an aspect to American drama, stretching back to westerns and deeply embedded in Tarantino, which draws upon the laconic. Lines are boiled down to the poetically essential, at the times where a character is forced to declare an intent or to reveal an immutable conviction. These lines are never declared lightly, and they invite insertion into dramatic space the way an old master invites itself into a gold frame. In The Children's Hour, these line appear with increasing frequency, but in this production they sink into the rhythm of general conversation, and we have to end up computing for ourselves the inner turmoil and the heroism of self-assertion they indicate. The actors simply do not have time to indicate this.
I could go to Google and find reasons why the Play is called The Children's Hour. However, I concocted my own answer on the way out. For me, the 'hour' is as in 'Their hour has come', and the children are those who are prepared to lie inventively, and with cunning legal reinforcement, in order to get even, irrespective of whatever damage they do. This prescience, of behalf of Lillian Hellman, propels the play out of it's story of simple tale of a spoiled brat onto a nationwide, and now international, canvas, with the cancer of litigiousness, and well-rewarded legal practices seemingly able to prove that black is white. Proving fault in others, in short, can be a career more rewarding than having to work.
As such, the play, in common with much of the best American 20th century drama, can invite a high degree of licence to be mythological, and one looks to the visual brio with which these texts have been revisited in recent productions. Diana Ford's enclosing set inhibits atmosphere and flexibility, while Jamie Platt's lighting demonstrates with all-too-infrequent moments of strength, where this production could have gone. The surreal staging conceit, in the final scene change, would have had me reaching for my phone to alert the metaphor police, but it was dutifully switched off. It does nothing that the text doesn't already accomplish in Hellman's careful planning. Ms Ford fares better at her costumes, from the stylish self-awareness of fading actress Lily Mortar, to the utilitarian thrift of the teachers, building up their business.
You can still catch this play before it's final performance on Saturday. I recommend you do.

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