Mary’s classmates, too, are susceptible to her in spite of themselves. As Peggy and Evelyn (Fogel and Munn) stare at Mary, who’s just gotten in trouble and reacted to it brazenly, they convey their mixture of fascination, fear, indignance, and desire for her approval. And as Rosalie, who has the misfortune to be blackmailed by Mary, Serena Adlerstein makes beautiful work of a child struggling to choose between what’s right and what she thinks is self-preservation.
Naturally, both the children and the adults of this Depression-era play seem discombobulated by a lot less in the way of scandal than we are today. Likewise, occasional slack points in the show seem attributable not to Marshall’s production, but to a script written for an audience with a different era’s capacity for shock. But no less horrific is the play’s horror: A human power defined not by what it can lift up, as Karen and Martha hope to, but by what it can belittle, outsmart, and bring down.
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman | Directed by Christine Louise Marshall | Produced by Mad Horse Theatre Company | at the Studio Theater at Portland Stage Company | through October 26 | at Maine State Ballet in Falmouth | November 6-16 | 207.730.2389
Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com.
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