Picnic at Hanging Rock - STAGE VERSION

One summer's day in 1900 three Australian schoolgirls grew tired of their classmates and yearned for adventure

Escaping their teacher's watchful gaze they absconded, away from the group and towards the beckoning Hanging Rock

Never to be seen again

Picnic at Hanging Rock has haunted the Australian psyche for over a century both in print and film

Now in Tom Wright's chilling stage adaptation, an all-female cast of five struggle to solve the mystery of the missing girls and their teacher

And once again euphoria and terror reverberate throughout Appleyard College, as the potential for history to repeat itself becomes nightmarishly real

This spine-tingling adaptation of Joan Lindsay's cult novel (famously filmed by Peter Weir) was a huge hit when it premiered at Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, Austrailia

And it opened to sensational reviews when it premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh in January 2017

REVIEWS

"This retelling of the Joan Lindsay cult classic proves the book's theme remains relevant and will terrify the pants off you" ~ The Guardian

An explosion of theatrical power as fierce as it is contemplative, and so original that no-one who sees it is likely to forget it Wright's adaptation gives fierce attention to the novel's sense of the sheer arrogance and inadequacy of imperial British culture, as it tried to "tame" a land so ancient, implacable, and strange. Yet it is brilliant, too, on the infinitely mutable energy of youth, the huge suppressed erotic power and pressure, in these young women, that feels as if it could literally move mountains, and tear its way through a gap in time ~ The Scotsman

Emotion, violence and meaning bubble up like magma mythic in its scope and magical in its appearance ... an evocative adaptation that finds horror not in nature, but in the civilising class ~ The Stage

Gripping ... The play becomes a vision of psychological breakdown as a prettified illusion is ripped apart by the raw force of nature. It's a show with a volcanic power ~ Guardian

"A potently poetic, enigmatic pschyco-drama ... Unmissable" ~ Edinburgh Reporter