Baby Jane.

Baby Jane follows the increasingly twisted dynamics between two sisters bound to each other by their involvement in a terrible car accident: Blanche, whom the accident some five decades earlier left paraplegic; and Jane, whose promising stage career the accident cut short.

We can be sure that, directed by its playwright, Baby Jane has been directed as its author intended.  If the play itself suffers a little by hammering these relationships home for longer than necessary in the first act, the second act makes up for it in the changing nature of those relationships.

In this adaptation of Wightman’s novel, Blanche seems a rational, good-natured sort, utterly dependent on the good will of her sister and of their housekeeper, Luisa.  But Jane’s obligation to care for Blanche, and the consequent frustration of her desire to reprise her “Baby Jane” stage persona, have increasingly embittered her.  And her desperation to continue trying to live up to her now deceased father’s stringent performance standards increasingly means more to her than any external reality.  Yet the character of Blanche is neither demanding nor passive, and we see her doing her best to control her own destiny.

Playing a woman beyond manic in the frustration of her narcissism, Louise Bennet conveys well the madness that Baby Jane descends into.  Victoria Tyrrell Dixon’s dependably masterful portrayal of Blanche renders her most sympathetic.  Andrea Garcia plays the goodhearted housekeeper, Luisa, with nicely understated realism, and Michael Sparks OAM conveys with some subtlety the critical undertones with which Jane and Blanche’s father motivates Jane to compete with Blanche for his approval.  Perhaps the evening’s most amazing performance was that of Tom Cullen as Jane’s young prospective accompanist and project partner Edwin Flagg, whose bodily discomfort with Jane’s delusional self-aggrandisement and flirting was palpable, as were Edwin’s efforts not to show it.

Performed with perfect timing, on a believable set that well indicated the power relationship between the sisters, this fresh take on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is well worth catching by anybody not easily disturbed by depictions of abusive behaviour.

— John P. Harvey

Images:

Top: [L–R] Tom Cullen and Louise Bennet, in Baby Jane.  Photographer: Antonia Kitzel.

Lower [L–R] Victoria Tyrrell Dixon and Andrea Garcia, in Baby Jane.  Photographer: Antonia Kitzel.