Thursday 29 May 1997

Wolf Lullaby, May 29, 1997


Written by Hilary Bell
By Performing Lines at The Malthouse until June 1, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 28, 1997
 
There is something supremely disturbing about a disturbed child. This makes Hilary Bell's Wolf Lullaby an intensely disturbing play.

Nine year old Lizzie Gael (Susan Prior) is hyperactive, voluble yet secretive. Her days are filled with chatter, chants and games, her nights with terrifying nightmares about a wolf sliding unseen under the door. She craves from her parents (Lisa Hensley & Sean O'Shea) reassurance that she is a good girl.

Prior as Lizzie gives an exceptional and uncanny portrait of a child. One forgets she is an adult as she skitters and slides, interrupts demands, muses, sings and plays. She is lovable but seems possessed of a demon that cannot let go of her tiny frame.

The play is unsettling both emotionally and physically. The tension is excruciating as we await Lizzie's confession. Did she kill baby Toby? Did she lure him away from his mummy and strangle him? Did she write those frightful words on the wall, "I murder so I may come back"?

Bell has based this family's horror story in Tasmania but it is based on such living nightmares as the Jamie Bolger murder. How can we comprehend the epitome of innocence becoming the essence of evil?

The torment of Lizzie's mother Angela is palpable in Hensley's moving and natural performance. Her desire to protect competes with her need for the truth. She seeks support from her ex-husband, Warren. "Help me", she pleads.

Anthony Phelan is effectively warm but unpredictable as the cop/interrogator. O'Shea portrays Warren's emotional cowardice without losing our sympathy. He has been an escape artist but this time he must face the possibility that his nervy little girl took her game too far, that he ignored her cries for help and her wolf took over.

Bell's dialogue has a rapid edgy realism and David O'Hare's direction keeps the pace and dramatic tension high although the last third drags a little. Some scenes seem unnecessarily truncated as though something we needed to see or know is missing. Appropriately, she does not provide us with an answer to the couple's inner plea, 'Why our child? Was it our fault?'

Genevieve Blanchett's design of walls scribbled with the murderous graffiti and an oversized chair provides an appropriately claustrophobic environment for this tortured story.

This is not a fun play but it is challenging with some exceptional performances.

KATE HERBERT

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