The Hiding Place – atyp Under the Wharf and The Night Whisperer

Overview

In a suburb beyond a suburb beyond a city at the water's edge, an ageing woman (Abi Rayment) keeps her ward locked up in an attic room. This captor sometimes seems a crone or an ogre, but more frequently she is a fearful, religious victim of a world that's been cruel. The captive girl, Emily (Michele Durman), has been brainwashed to believe her backyard is a wild forest and the world beyond it is dead and rotten. What's more, she doesn't realise she's no longer a girl at all; she's a woman, old enough to kiss and love and choose and err and bear children of her own.

This modern story with fairytale underpinnings is a new work from Sydney playwright Kendall Feaver that plays off our ongoing fascination with kidnapped children and isolationist cults. Its premise may seem highly contrived, but under the eye of director Kai Raisbeck, The Hiding Place soon starts to slyly charm you. It happens around when Patrick (Philippe Klaus) unwittingly breaks into Emily's house and comes to befriend her, bringing slivers of our reality with him: outer space, the composition of stars, the passing of birthdays, touching. Fragmented, these pieces form a fantasy of their own, as Patrick has a tense home life with his father (Paul Hooper) that he'd rather escape.

The bittersweet script has some real moments of clarity and poetry, not least of which is the way it locates the source of magic as the artificial weight we place on otherwise everyday things. There is, however, a heavyhandedness in the production that sometimes drowns these moments rather than allowing them to simply connect. Nate Edmondson's sound and Sara Swersky's lighting design shows remarkable flair and potential for sensitivity, but there's a little too much of it this time around. You can practically hear the speakers and switches flicking on.

It’s the meaningful resolution The Hiding Place contains for its two conflicted familial pairs that ultimately makes it rewarding. This is boosted by the very honest performance of Hooper, who makes it easy to empathise with his tough-copper single dad just trying to do right and for whom you'll surely be barracking to get a chance to be a hero.