Exitleft presents Picnic at Hanging Rock

The haunting Australian mystery is presented afresh with Tom Wright’s chilling adaption. ‘I know you’re there… Miranda? Miranda!’ On a blistering summer’s day in 1900, four private school girls and a teacher venture up to Hanging Rock. All but one vanish, never to be seen again. For those left, the nightmare begins. First published in 1967 Joan Lindsay’s seminal novel is considered to be one of the greatest of Australian works, becoming part of the national folklore. Tom Wright’s chilling adaption sees five performers struggle to solve the mystery of the missing girls and their teacher. Euphoria and terror reverberate through the community, as the potential for history to repeat itself becomes nightmarishly real. ‘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‘ – Scotsman Play – 85 minutes (with no interval) Contains occasional coarse language and horror themes