The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 81

SUNDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 1994 1 Ell It Fipdoi a Rfflss MDddh Scaremongering and witch-hunting in 'The Hour' still has a chilling sexual topicality says Michael Cdveney and Jason Carr's underpinning music, with good trumpet writing, strikes the right balance between portentousness and danger. Bill Bryden's The Big Picnic in the huge Harland and Wolff shed in Govan is the Starlight-Express of the -First World War: Spielbergiari lighting effects and environmental staging, with the audience as close to the trenches as they are to Lloyd Webber's roller-skating action; a carefully sifted quota of 'human interest'; and an apocalyptic finale, with, the Angel of Mons leading the risen dead of the kilted Glasgow battalion back home to Govan intimitis ixty years aifter its New York premiere, Lillian Hellman's -The Children's Hour receives its first major public performance in London. After a sticky, slightly irritating start as a.girls'. schoolroom melodrama Daisy Pulls It Off without, alas, gymslips the play's flame burns bright and strong as a vicious witch-hunt, uncannily prophetic of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, ultimately, a moving and unexpected tragedy. Patience is rewarded in Howard Davies's production, with Harriet Walter and Clare Higgins scaling the heights as the slandered teachers, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie.

An unhappy, destructive student, Mary Tilford (Emily Watson), whispers in.her grandmother's ear that the women are lovers and the. town recoils in righteous horror. A Lillian Hell-man of today would write a proudto-be-gay, defiant last act. Instead, Karen and Martha sue for libel, lose their case, arid their school, and a lot more. In a magnificent, gracefully written climax; Karen's doctor boyfriend (William Gaminara) wrestles with his confused affections arid leaves Martha admits that she does feel physically drawn towards Karen.

When the situation is beyond recall, the prosecuting grandmother (Gillian Barge) withdraws her allegations, and knuckles down to a long periitent haul in the town. Martha's old aunt, Lily Mortar (Alison Fiske in a brisk; flighty cameo), an excessive actress who has been teaching elocution classes and avoiding the court case by going on tour, remains helpless. For a first play, The Children's Hour, based oh a Scottish trial of 1810, is remarkable enough. But its treatment of scaremongering over sexual abuse in schools, the fingering of teachers' private lives, and the tenderness with which the' two main roles are written, lend the piece a reverberation way beyond its period value. Clare Higgins plays with a toughness and a mounting terror at what is happening to her, while Ms Walter embarks on a journey of emotional discovery that suggests the play is only beginning at die end.

Ashley Martin-Davis's timbered, airy design switches between. small town cleanliness and empty desolation, Banned and Burned in 1924 I'lrtl llaribaik Publication for.Savnty Ytan Details from: RJVNooto (t Fnlryicw Road Slough SL2 JUL, 0753 539565 "III I i it where they form a memorial tableau the style of Charles Sargeant Jagger's public sculptures. The rocky musical has three races, each less exciting than its predecessor. The Big Picnic ('Afew sandwiches short or a Big Picnic' averred one grumpy Scottish front-, page story last weekend) mobilises the. seated section of the audience no less than 16 (count 'em) times on track-bound terracing from Govan to the Front Line; on the other side of designer William Dudley's mud-brown Flanders Field, the promenaders flit among a scaffolded three-tiered gantry and invade the edge of the action.

An amusing French lesson before the lads march off to war is followed by a spirited comic spat about sporrans and weaponry, One of the soldiers is revealed to be illiterate during a 'letters home' sequence. And nurses and girlfriends occupy the battlefield like spectral incarnations complementary to the soothing ministrations of the gliding Angel (eloquently gestured, upside down until the last scene, by a flame-wigged Deborah Pope, who was Bryden 's spirit of the cunning little Vixen at Covent Garden). Bryden's production makes something both sensual and' pathetic of the soldiers' fate, their slow march to oblivion, as we track alongside thcrn through Chris light show of coloured lasers; starshells and tracer bullets, and snuggle down in the almost cosy, enveloping fog of mustard gits at the Bdttle of the Somme. The band on the moving platform in the sky picks out the piper's tune and sidles, seductively, into another blast of amplified 'Jock-Rock'. For all the show's, flaws, it isimpossible to gainsay the power and die glory of such, moments.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Bush and the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs have produced two miniature gems in London. Richard Cameron's Tho Mortal Ash is a compelling drama of a South Yorkshire family in retreat from community contempt: Dad (Paul Copley, almost parodying Yorkshire School scandal: Harriet Waiter (left) and Clare Higgins. Photograph: Neil Libbert grit down the years) killed a girl while bulldozing a site for a new supermarket and has a long second act monologue submerging life's great causes in modest ecological resolutions, Simon Usher, directs niftiJy, Jane Cox stands out as a maternal gorgon with a soft centre. Much harder, and better, is Joe PenhaU's Some Voices in which a maladjusted schizoid Ray (brilliantly played by Lee Ross), falls for a victimised, pregnant Irish girlj Laura (the amazing, waif-like gingernut Anna Livia Ryan) he. tells Laura he loves her and disappears over the edge, under the surface, like Buchner's Woyzecki The couple's happiness on a Southend daytrip is threatened by Dave (Lloyd Hutchinson), Laura's violent lover.

Ray's, brother, an overworked cook (Ray Winstone), tries to keep, diings solid. But the other world of madness and uncertainty, personified in Tom Watson's delirious, peripheral tramp, is dragging Ray down to the deep. The upshot is both'terrifying and plausible, and the play ends on an almost unbearable dying fall, with Ray losing his grip while learning how to cook an omelette. Ian Rickson's production -ingeniously rediscovering each nook and cranny 6f the Upstairs is a supplementary justification of the adventurous Court policy launched downstairs with Jonathan Harvey's imperfect Babies. The writing's wonderfully dry, almost to the point of desiccation.

The play is haunting and jazzily contemporary. Penhall's post-Pinter promising. The Children's Hour Lyttelton, Royal National Theatre, London SE1 (071-928 Tho Big Picnic Harland and Wolff shed, Govan, Glasgow (041-242 3666); Tho Mortal Ash Bush Theatre, London W12 (081-743 $388); Some Volcos Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London SW1 (071-730 2554).