Hard Times

Hard Times is one of those novels where everyone knows the start (tyrannical schoolmaster Gradgrind and the definition of “horse”), but no-one seems to know the ending. Icon Theatre’s production remedies this deficiency, weaving a complicated, compassionate and grown-up tale of lives blighted by subjection to social and financial expedience.

The puppet children who populate the show’s early stages are symbolically apt, but strangely un-engaging: the show catches light when the actors pulling the strings finally step forward to play the roles themselves. The acting company of three do a remarkable job of fleshing out Dickens’ extensive, eccentric cast list, and their multiple personae are manipulated and juxtaposed with sensitivity and illuminating wit.

The two men in the cast don’t have much joy as gargoyle-ish Victorian patriarchs, but they both have the knack of making good characters interesting. Tom Peters as Stephen Blackpool unearths a seam of humour that warms the persecuted mill-hand’s self-destructive integrity, and James Hyland’s Mr. Sleary makes an understatedly humane appeal for the necessity of circus tinsel among the chimneys of the industrial north. Raewyn Lippert’s Sissy tends towards the clownish, but her Louisa is gravely thoughtful, regarding a repugnant marriage with chilling impersonality, belied by the painful tautness of her deportment. Nancy Hirst’s intelligent choreography makes her a clockwork doll in a bridal veil, the stitching of her wedding clothes fusing diabolically with the Coketown rhythms of sweated factory labour.

Angeline Ferguson’s eerie cut-out projections flood the stage with a phantasmagoria of circus riders and bank robbers, while Christopher Warner’s score seductively maps the show’s descent from the relative innocence of the fairground to the gaudy temptations of more dangerous adult vices. Psycho-balletic dream sequences (very Agnes de Mille) help to maintain narrative fluidity, and offer fleeting glimpses into the repressed secret worlds of characters desperately struggling to subdue their desires and passions to the demands of a bankrupt moral economy. Hard Times is a small show with very big ambitions, which transcends the limitations of some thrifty production values to achieve a genuinely epic quality in its storytelling.

Production Information
Hard Times is at the Warehouse Theatre until 16 November. Visit the Icon Theatre website for information about the company.

Photo Credits
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