The Children’s Hour starts innocently with a group of boarding school girls amid a sewing and elocution lesson. The pupils are chatting, arguing, playing, and then late arrival Mary enters the room with flowers from a garbage can, and the deceit begins with heart-breaking consequences.

Written by Lillian Hellman, The Children’s Hour is the dramatic tale of the damage one cruel and conniving student can do when she lies about her teachers, accusing them of being sexually intimate at school. It’s a powerful pertinent play about the importance of reputation and the consequences of falsity.

Mary (Kim Clifton) is awful. No one wants to say a child is vile, but Mary is rotten to the core. The teachers think the troublemaking adolescent is a bad influence on the other girls, but they don’t know the half of it. Mary is physically and emotionally abusive, controlling, manipulative and destructive. She thinks her grandmother, Mrs Tilford (magnificently played by Annie Byron) is someone she can ‘manage’ and she physically attacks the other girls when they attempt to stand up to her demands. Clifton does a brilliant job in portraying a psychopath in the making and a character to be despised. She’s brutal one moment, switching to sickly sweet, as she turns on Mary’s malicious nature.

School mistresses Karen (Romney Hamilton) and Martha (Jess Bell), have been close friends since college days and worked hard to create their girls school. The fondness the pair feel for one another is evident but when Mary learns Martha has never been in a relationship and seems jealous of Karen’s fiancé, Joe (Mike Booth), in an act of revenge she twists the information out of spite.

The cast perform with empathetic acting that pulls you into the story. Raw and real, Bell expresses strong emotions on stage, scrunching her face, as if holding back tears or her true words, while showing all her feelings. Where Bell is emotional, Hamilton (as Karen) is tightly repressed. She plays the character with a noticeable calmness, tension simmering below the surface, determined to remain in control, even when she has resigned to her situation.

Mary devises a lie, with a dash of truth, helped along by some blackmail, destroying the livelihood and lives of the teachers, as the students are pulled from the school and the school closes down.

What is truly disturbing is The Children’s Hour is based on a true story. A libel case in Scotland (1810), with a teenage girl, who alleged that her headmistresses were engaged in a lesbian relationship. In real life, the teachers won the court case, although the damage was done, their reputations ruined. 

The play was scandalous when it first opened in 1934 and banned in London, Boston and Chicago. Same-sex relationships were considered ‘unnatural’ and even the mention of homosexuality on stage was illegal in New York.

The Old Fitz Theatre is one of Australia’s smallest theatres, with just 55 seats and a small intimate stage space. Set Designer Emelia Simcox has made clever use of the stage with painted translucent backdrops, which by switching screens, allows for quick setting change. Most of the show, the screens are a flowered design, used for the school and teachers’ home setting. Shifting to Mrs Tilford’s home, the screen features rich red curtains that immediately create a feeling of opulence and wealth.

Led by award-winning director and producer Kim Hardwick, The Children’s Hour playing at the Old Fitz Theatre is part of the 2025 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival. The play runs for two hours and 30 minutes (including interval) and some scenes felt drawn out. However, this version is not a re-imaging of the original play. Despite producers Deborah Jones and Romney Hamilton gaining the rights to the play, they were advised no changes could be made. Yet, it seems the text of 90 years ago is still relevant with the themes of the play, bullying, sexual accusations and the right to be who you want to be, still present today.

4 stars.

Presented by first time collaborators Tiny Dog Productions and Dead Fly Productions. The Children’s Hour is playing at the Old Fitz Theatre, until 1 March 2025.

For tickets visit Old Fitz Theatre