Perhaps it’s unpatriotic to suggest it, but I’d argue that Australia has produced strikingly few immortal works of art, particularly narrative art. But, we’ll always have Picnic at Hanging Rock – which can make a strong claim for being the most important Australian artistic work of the 20th century, and one that still casts a shadow over the 21st.
The novel by Joan Lindsay first saw the light of day in 1967, but it was Peter Weir’s 1975 film adaptation – a haunting and subtle work and the ne plus ultra of Australian Gothic – that really struck a chord with audiences. This year marks the film’s 50th anniversary, which seems to be the reason behind this haunting new production for Sydney Theatre Company’s 2025 season, the latest of numerous stage adaptations.
STC Resident Director Ian Michael (Constellations, Stolen) and playwright Tom Wright (whose adaptation was first staged by Malthouse Theatre and Black Swan Theatre in 2016) are certainly betting on Picnic at Hanging Rock’s cultural staying power.
This Picnic is in no way naturalistic, but it certainly evokes a sense of the uncanny
Both Lindsay’s novel and Weir’s film are elliptical and meditative, posing questions rather than offering answers. This production is perhaps more opaque than either, taking an experimental direction that ramps up the themes of horror and suspense. This works a treat in the early movements of the play, keeping the audience off kilter, forcing us to engage with a conceptual realm where time, space, and identity are malleable. As things progress, we become trapped in a thudding, repetitive narrative rhythm; sectioned up by abrupt breaks heralded by stark chapter headings projected onto the stage.
The heightened stylistic choices make for an exciting new take on this well-trodden story. However, if you haven’t come prepared with at least some familiarity with the broad strokes of the narrative, you could wind up feeling as lost as, say, four young women who vanished into the bush on a hot St Valentine’s Day in 1900.
As the play opens, we’re presented with a row of five performers in traditional school uniforms standing on a stark stage – Elizabeth Gadsby’s design has a thick layer of dead leaves strewn across the boards and an ominous, brutalist lightbox hanging above. Between them, Olivia De Jonge, Kirsty Marillier, Lorinda May Merrypor, Masego Pitso and Contessa Treffone tackle all 17 roles in the play.
De Jonge essays Mrs Appleyard, the headmistress of Appleyard College, a brittle and bitter woman as constrained by her own authoritarian temperament as any of her young charges. The most frequent victim of her dictatorial discipline is Sara (a standout performance from Pitso), who was not allowed to go on the titular picnic, because of some transgression. Sara’s inchoate grief over the vanished Miranda is palpable; as is the horrified confusion of Marillier’s Irma, the only girl to return from the excursion. The rest – Miranda, Marion, and teacher Miss McCraw – vanish forever, of course.
“Forever” is a concept that Ian Michael grapples with throughout the play, as is the notion of transgression; the idea that these young women have been snatched away, or transfigured in some unknowable way, because they have trespassed somewhere forbidden. Himself a proud Noongar man hailing from Western Australia, Michael’s production is interested in shedding new light on the colonial themes of this story, and introducing a First Nations perspective, which has long been missing. He has noted that the real life Hanging Rock (or Ngannelong) in central Victoria is a place sacred to the land’s traditional owners (the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung, and Taungurung people). The girls’ disappearance takes on new meaning, perhaps as a kind of punishment for defiling the place?
This element comes across obliquely but effectively on the stage, at times approaching the idea of cosmic horror – the notion that we are brushing up against something ancient, unknowable, and as indifferent to our existence as we are to that of… well, ants at a picnic. This ominous terror is reinforced by straitened performances, rigid physical choreography, and abrupt lighting from Trent Suidgeest, who plunges us into bloody reds and abyssal blacks without warning, heightened by an unsettling, at times atonal soundscape crafted by James Brown. At one point, the production abruptly shifts into a short, surreal dance sequence set to modern electronic music, wrenching us out of the sense of place and time completely. This Picnic is in no way naturalistic, but it certainly evokes a sense of the uncanny.
And yet, for all this artistry, Picnic begins to drag in the back half – surprising, given it runs at a tight and interval-free 85 minutes. After a while, the rapid-fire shifts in time, space, and character begin to work against the play. The lack of connective tissue between moments may be deliberate, but the sense of confusion does have the potential to irritate some theatregoers. Towards the final curtain, you sense that we’ve run out of variations on the theme, and that too could be an artefact of our familiarity with the source material – we know where we’re going to end up, more or less, but how we get there is the interesting part.
At times, the mysteries of Picnic at Hanging Rock err on the side of muddy. But still, there’s a lot to admire in this gutsy new angle on an important cultural touchstone – so much that complaints seem churlish, simply because the intent to produce something striking and indelible is so clear.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is playing at the Sydney Opera House’s Drama Theatre until April 5, 2025. Tickets are on sale over here.
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