Picnic at Hanging Rock

To colonisers of Australia, the unknown vastness and mysteries of this ancient continent must have been terrifying.  Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel about three schoolgirls and their French teacher who vanished at Hanging Rock in central Victoria – and then Peter Weir’s landmark film – is a masterpiece of this dark Gothic Australia.

With such verisimilitude, it has the eery sense of a true story.  It happened on St Valentine’s Day, 1900.

Now the play by Tom Wright, after an MTC premiere nine years ago, is meticulously directed by STC Resident Director and Noongar man, Ian Michael, with an outstanding creative team and cast of five playing two or more roles.   

Under Elizabeth Gadsby’s impressive overhang on a wide open stage littered with  gumleaves, the girls stand in a line, in hats and blazers like at speech day, and share the storytelling, establishing urgently its poetic metaphysical tone.  Contrasting this direct speech are short, mostly naturalistic scenes, titled above in large projected words, between the girls and teachers, the events that fateful day, witnesses and suspicious police going down rabbit holes.  

While the disappearance is never explained, the terror, hysteria and corrosion within Appleyard College is artfully built by Michael with Trent Suidgeest’s abrupt dynamic lighting and James Brown sound from ethereal to thunderous.

Olivia de Jonge captivates as Miranda leading others into oblivion and especially the Headmistress Mrs Appleyard, desperate to stay civilised and British against the void. Turning to drink, she bullies the coloured, orphaned student Sara, so expressively played by Masego Pitso.

As well as being these unsettled, repressed teenagers, Lorinda May Merrygor also convinces as the local constable, as does the authoritative Contessa Treffone as the effete Englishman who searches for the girls, and Kirsty Marillier as the only missing student to return, screaming at this country and the girls as they strip away her virginal dress.

While Wright’s more poetic language is sometimes lost and fast character changes can fog the narrative, this is compelling inventive theatre, thrilling and yet almost transcendental.

The final title is “Ngannelong” restoring the original name and Indigenous authority of this mysterious volcanic site.  

Martin Portus

Photographer: Daniel Boud