What: A musical adaptation of Joan Lindsay's novel about a schoolgirl picnic in Victoria, Australia where several girls and a schoolteacher mysteriously go missing. As the search for the missing girls continues, the remaining students and teachers slowly start to fracture themselves, the damage from the tragedy stretching out to encompass them.
And? What a weird weird story. I'm half-tempted to read the novel, but from what I've learned it has as dissatisfying and inconclusive an ending as the musical does. The show is full of strong performers (and it's refreshing to see another female-dominated musical), but the staging feels very cramped on the Greenwich House stage. The scenic design, though visually striking, cinches the cast in, and then there is choreo of the seven students trying valiantly to not knock themselves against anything as they spin. I don't think it needed to be this claustrophobic; I think the Greenwich House Theater is actually maneuverable enough to allow for a more expansive performance space to really let the story and performers breathe (this is, after all, where the pie shop Sweeney Todd played, when it was still the Barrow Street Theater).
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| The company of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Photo by Matthew Murphy. |
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