Small-town lie rips lives apart

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'The Children's Hour' 2 p.m. Sunday Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter $6 438-4480

Imagine the power that a lie could have and how gossip could destroy. That's the context of Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour" and — if you can imagine a time before political correctness, same-sex marriage, and situational morality — you can appreciate the dilemma of the central characters.

Karen and Martha are thirtysomething spinsters running a girls' boarding school and small farm. They've worked hard and scrimped for 10 years and have begun to have a modest success. Karen is engaged to the town doctor. Martha is supporting her aunt, who also lives at the school.

The lie begins with a mean-spirited pupil punished for misbehavior. Ten-year-old Mary is a genuinely bad seed, who retaliates by telling her grandmother that her teachers have been having a lesbian affair. The gossip spreads, parents whisk away their children, and the women's lives are in shambles almost overnight.

The current Readers Theatre production directed by Vanita Rae Smith for Army Community Theatre gives it a new twist. Instead of one nasty little girl, Mary's dialogue is read by several adult cast members in unison, giving a Greek chorus effect suggestive of the writhing schoolgirls from "The Crucible" and any number of horror-movie soundtracks.

It's a surprising approach that initially draws attention to itself and ultimately becomes tedious. Thankfully, little Mary appears only briefly in Act 2, where the central characters each disintegrate in their own way.

The characters suffer as much from each other as from being shunned by the small town. The plot has too many characters acting for the benefit of others rather than their own. Self-sacrifices pile up fast, with the effect that the interests of all suffer.

Karen (read by Sylvia Hormann-Alper) and Martha (Jo Pruden) have long self-explanatory monologues late in the play detailing their inability to act. When one of them finally does, it smacks of playwright manipulation.

The supporting characters also give revealing speeches before the final curtain. Richard Pellett as the doctor/fiancé is ashamed at needing confirmation that the rumors are untrue. Electra Fair as Aunt Lily confesses her neediness. And Mary Frances Kabel Gwin as Mary's grandmother seeks redemption for having spread the lie.

And what of little Mary herself? She's not needed and unseen at the end of the play, her evil work being done. One wonders, though, at her adult sophistication in manipulating innuendo early in the play and finding the one lie with an ounce of truth.

Despite its datedness, the play eventually delivers some powerful emotion. And the magic of Readers Theatre lets us be totally convinced by Pellett's reading as little Rosalie, a thoroughly cowed and not-too-bright schoolmate of Mary.

"The Children's Hour" plays one more Sunday performance at Fort Shafter's Richardson Theatre.