Theatre: "The Children' Hour"

I saw "The Children's Hour", the play written by Lillian Hellman in 1934 that is currently being revived in London at the Comedy Theatre, with Keira Knightly and Elisabeth Moss in the main roles of Karen and Martha respectively.

It's by no means great theatre (although it's already sold out until the end of April and still in previews) but I want to write about it, because it made me think about how some "controversial" themes (and theatre) appear to date rather quickly, and what seemed daring once can look strangely stiff and even reactionary now. How can theatre that time has rendered a little obsolete still be made relevant?

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The Children's Hour is a play every lesbian knows (or should know), because it's one of the first to make the relationship between two women - one of whom ends up identifying herself as a lesbian - its main focus. It is in fact what drives the drama.

The plot is simple: best friends Karen and Martha run a girls' school with some success. Karen is engaged to be married to Joe, a lovely young man, and this seems to cause some nervousness in Martha, something her aunt - a failed actress and a lush who teaches elocution in the school - picks on and calls "unnatural". In the meantime, Mary, one of the girls in the school, causes problems that have mainly to do with her lying and is punished for it. As a revenge she tells her powerful grandmother that she's seen something odd going on in the school, something that frigthens her, therefore she wants to leave. On her grandmother's insistence she reveals that she and other children have seen Karen and Martha kissing, heard strange noises coming from Karen's room at night. While we know this is a lie, the grandmother believes Mary and lets all the other parents know. The children are all taken out of the school.

Karen, Martha and Joe confront the grandmother and decide to sue her for libel, but lose. Martha and Karen are left hiding in their big empty school with only visits from Joe and a lecherous tradesman, shunned from the rest of society. Joe suggests that the three of them leave: he will marry Karen and Martha will go with them where nobody knows them, to start a new life. But Karen doesn't want Joe to sacrifice his life and career, and sends him away, after having him admit that he himself has been "infected" by doubts about the nature of her relationship with Martha.

Martha finds out about this and urges Karen to marry Joe, to save herself. Finally she confesses that what happened has caused her to doubt herself and question her own feelings for Karen, until she admits to having always loved her, even without knowing. Karen says they'lll talk about it tomorrow after they have calmed down. Martha goes to her room and shoots herself. That's exactly when the evil grandmother (Ellen Burtsyn play her vith great vulnerability, which makes her actions all the more chilling) arrives, confessing that she was wrong all along, that Mary has finally confessed to having lied. But it's too late.

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I don't think that the play is dated in terms of plot. I am pretty sure that there are places, social classes, environmenta where the suggestion of lesbianism for the teachers of a private girls' school would have similar devastating consequences, including a suicide. What is really problematic for me is that while both Karen and Martha are portrayed in sympathetic terms, the moral issue at the centre of the play is always the lying, not the content of Mary's lie.

What I mean is that, not one of the characters at any stage of the play questions the morality of the grandmother's (and the community's at large) actions if the lie were true. They all seem to accept implicitly that once Karen and Martha's "unnatural" relationship has been proved correct, what befalls them is if not deserved at least understandable, in the natural order of things. This includes Martha, who by the end of the play blames herself for the entire disaster, even going so far to say that she must have somehow "revealed" her wrongness for Mary to pick on it.

I had a long discussion with my sister about this, and she insisted that Hellman went as far as she could for her time, that in 1934 she could have never problematised lesbian discrimination in any other terms: that we must read between the lines. Maybe she's right, especially considering that outside of New York (where it was a huge success), the play incurred in a number of bannings, precisely because of the sympathetic portrayal of Martha.

When the first film based on it was made, in 1936, they went so far as to change content of the lie, making Martha secretly in love with Joe rather than Karen, which gives us a sense of the morality of the times. However the fact that the play would work regardless of this fundamental change, supports my opinion that "lesbianism" is ultimately problematised in negative terms, as sinful and bad as betrayal/adultery.



In the 1950s Hellman state that her focus and interest in the play had shifted on the power of the lie, in occasion of a revival that followed her standing up to the Un-American Activities Committee, thus transforming The Children's Hour as a metaphor for McCarthysm and its anti-Communist witch-hunt (she was blacklisted in Hollywood).

In 1961 William Wyler, who'd directed the first, censored film version, directed a more faithful one, with Audrey Hepburn as Karen and Shiley MacLaine as Martha. It's a lesbian film classic, but again very problematic: for the tragic ending and for the rather hysterical performances, especially in those moments when lesbianism becomes a real possibility rather than a lie.



So, why revive it now? In the playbill notes, the director Ian Rickson mentions something about its political relevance in these times of absolute truths, religious extremism and invasive state practices, therefore linking his own reading to the "metaphor for McCarthysm" Hellman had hinted at in the 1950s. Except that I didn't see anything in his production to suggest any connection outside the private world of the protagonists and the times in which they live.

Knightly and Moss give decent performances (in fact better, more controlled than I expected from Knightly), but also quite monochord ones, without much subtlety, let alone sexual chemistry. The characters are what they say they are, to the letter, therefore remaining very opaque, dull even, difficult to empathise with.

This is odd, because the performances of the children and in particular of the young woman who plays Mary, Bryony Hannah, are astonishing: nuanced, complex, modern, responding to each other as actors should do, making their presence on stage (their bodies, their movements) count. The only hint of a new approach to the text, an attempt to make it relevant to us, comes precisely from the children who are shown here on the cusp of sexual awakening and confused, even tormented by it and by the costraints of their education.

During her final confession to Karen, Martha asks: why of all the possible lies did Mary choose this? What did she see in me, in us to make her say it? My internal answer to that was that she saw "that" in herself, and was afraid of it, reacting like a self-loathing teenager who has been taught how pleasure should be followed punishment.

Sadly, I don't think that this strong reading of the play, the only one that could make it relevant and even acceptable to a modern audience is carried throughout consistently. The fact that the lead actresses can't seem to inject their performance with enough subtlety and depth to make us care for them and their friendship doesn't help. Karen's feelings for Martha remains especially obscure, barely there in fact, and frankly that's a big failure for a play that was supposed to be so groundbreaking in bringing lesbian themes to the stage.