'Picnic at Hanging Rock' Off-Broadway review — classic mystery story climbs to the stage

Read our review of Picnic at Hanging Rock off Broadway, a world-premiere musical adaptation of Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel and Peter Weir's 1975 film.

Summary

• The Picnic At Hanging Rock musical adapts an influential 1967 Australian mystery book about the vanishing of three schoolgirls and their teacher
• The show succeeds best through the yearning lyrics in Greta Gertler Gold and Hilary Bell’s score
• The show is recommended for fans of coming-of-age stories and the Picnic At Hanging Rock book; movie; or miniseries

The conditions seem innocuous enough for a picnic at Hanging Rock — or Ngannelong, as named by the Aboriginal Australians — a formerly volcanic geological structure in Victoria, Australia. But what should be an bucolic outing with lemonade, gingerbread, and heart-shaped cake morphs into a nightmare when three schoolgirls and a teacher disappear into the geological grandeur without a trace in 1900.

Adapting Picnic At Hanging Rock is tricky, as the story is more curious about the psychological ripples of the disappearance rather than a hunt for literal answers. The musical — with an indie-pop-folk score composed by Greta Gertler Gold, with Hilary Bell as lyricist and bookwriter — serves as the latest adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 seminal mystery novel of the same name following the 1975 Peter Weir film, a 2018 television miniseries, a play, and other musical adaptations.

Free-spirited country girl Miranda (Gillian Han, with cool mystique), heiress Irma (Tatianna Córdoba), and brainy Marion (Kate Louissaint) are the trio who disappear into the rock along with their teacher, Greta McGraw (a standout, penetrative Kaye Tuckerman). The austere headmistress Miss Appleyard (Erin Davies, all militant tough love), French teacher Mademoiselle (Marina Pires, with a disposition sweet as violets), orphaned Sara (Sarah Walsh), and other schoolgirls are left tormented. Were their peers sexually assaulted? Did they tumble off a cliff? Does a sinister force exist in the Rock? The one girl who saw them last, Edith (Carly Rose Gendall), is at a loss. Portia Kieger’s direction lets us glimpse that the three girls drifted into a trance and sauntered away, never to return.

The production struggles to pace the idyllic and the urgent in its 2-hour-30-minute length. Details like Edith wondering why their missing teacher was last seen “wearing nothing” (petticoats being akin to nudity) don’t get breathing space. Mayte Natalio’s choreography is hurried and overstimulating, as if the girls swallowed a quart of coffee. Communal trauma calls for a slow-boil, especially leading up to the physical viciousness that erupts in Act 2.

Even when the book needs to breathe, Bell sows moving lyrical craft — “Will I flicker and die or will I open up like a flower?” — sensible to how young people poeticize the landscape around them. When Sara sings a Valentine poem to Miranda, she sings rapturously of “Peonies,” one of many tunes in a song list that flatters Walsh’s talents. Gold is in her element when using her ethereal score to express pining, with enough complex harmonies to impress despite the subpar sound mixing in the Greenwich House Theater.

Bell’s book is at its high during moments of banter between the girls, even when the dialogue feels awkwardly squeezed between songs in Act 1. There's also fresher ideas in the class-racial dynamic, reimagined from the source material, between British gentleman Michael (Reese Sebastian Diaz, with a flutey ingénue cadence) and his friend Bertie (a steel-faced Bradley Lewis), an Aboriginal tracker, who find themselves witnesses and search party members for the missing girls.

This Picnic At Hanging Rock staging yearns to scale a further mile, like the girls who pine from an escape from time and the inevitable doom of growing up. Though the show is imperfect, the finale “Time and Place” peaks among the many harmonies, with an entire ensemble ensnared and enchanted by the Rock.

Picnic At Hanging Rock summary

On Valentine’s Day in 1900, teenage boarding school students in Australia go on a picnic at Hanging Rock. Seniors Miranda, Marion, and Irma explore the Rock and vanish, and fellow student Edith sees their disappearance but can't explain what happened. A teacher, Greta McCraw, also goes missing into the rock. As a grueling search ensues, the consequences ripple out for the teachers and classmates left to make sense of the tragedy.

What to expect at Picnic At Hanging Rock

In the Greenwich House Theater, Daniel Zimmerman’s economic set design plants rocks, tall grass, and sediments at the sides of the stage amid furnishings of the boarding school. In the background, impressionist paint swirls suggest tree leaves and the clouds hovering above. A balcony ledge hangs crooked with casual portentousness, as if it could crack off and flatten the bass and cello player of the four-piece band below. Nick Kourtides’s wind-whirled sound design rumbles or creaks in eeriness, peppered with bird chitters and the ominous roll of drums.

Bodies dance around, or haunt, the audience space to make the experience feel semi-immersive, and you might have to turn to see certain sights. Without spoiling the context, apparitions bear wreaths that look like something out of Midsommar. Rounding out this tableau, Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s costume design weaves characterizations of the girls into the variety of colors and patterns printed on their picnic frocks.

Who should see Picnic At Hanging Rock

• Picnic At Hanging Rock is for fans of coming-of-age stories (like Spring Awakening) and the mysteries of lost innocence, considering the book’s influence on future literature like The Virgin Suicides.
• Those who read the original book, and/or saw the 1975 movie adaptation or the 2018 miniseries, would be intrigued by this new telling, especially as this one adds in a First Nations perspective on Ngannelong’s history.
• Listeners of the indie-pop music of Greta Gertler Gold would be keen to explore her stage work.
• Fans of Tatianna Córdoba, from Real Women Have Curves on Broadway earlier this year, would be pleased to see her again.

Learn more about Picnic At Hanging Rock off Broadway

Picnic At Hanging Rock stands at the precipice of reaching its full potential as a musical, still shaky in its climb to success but buoyed by lyrics loaded with longing.

Learn more and get Picnic at Hanging Rock tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Picnic at Hanging Rock is at the Greenwich House Theater through January 17.

Photo credit: Picnic at Hanging Rock off Broadway. (Photos by Matthew Murphy)