Baby Jane. Adapted and directed by Ed Wightman from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell. Canberra Rep. Canberra Rep Theatre. Feb 20 - March 8.
Baby Jane is certainly a lurid piece of modern melodrama. Two sist ers are locked in an inte rminable battle over who did what to whom. Baby Jane (Louise Bennet) was a child performer eclipsed by her sister Blanch (Victoria Tyrrell Dixon) whose output was less vaudevillian and more straight film acting. An accident has put Blanche in a wheelchair, ending her career. Who really was to blame? How the two sisters, struggling together in an old house, will survive is the question.
The best known iteration of the story is the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, of 1962. It is based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell.
This version rings some changes but remains a great vehicle for the two leads especially to indulge in psychological carry on.
This they do on a grand multilevel Andrew Kay set lit disturbingly at appropriate moments by Nathan Sciberras. Anna Senior’s costumes support a sense of period especially in the complex lace creation sported by Baby Jane in her childhood persona.
As Blanch, the sister trapped increasingly by the injuries caused by the car accident, watches her old films on TV and desperately tries to escape, Jane becomes more and more unhinged and controlling. Housekeeper Luisa (Andrea Garcia) tries to keep her job in an increasingly strange situation. Edwin Flagg (Tom Cullen) arrives, a dodgy young man who is being employed by Jane to help restart her singing career. And a sinister father figure of a ghost (Michael Sparks) wanders through to haunt her.
It’s a longish evening but well sustained by an excellent cast who are clearly enjoying the madness. The only sane person would appear to be the housekeeper, given a sensible and worried demeanour in a level headed performance by Garcia. The father figure is just there to mock Jane from her subconscious and a fine job Sparks makes of it too. Cullen is suitably unsettling as Flagg, the potential music teacher.
Blanch’s despair in her room confined to a wheelchair is a less showy part than that of Jane but requires the kind of tension and truthfulness brought to it by Tyrrell Dixon. And as Jane, still trapped in that Baby Jane performance persona, Bennet is a mesmerising and increasingly unsettling presence.
If this kind of filmic or theatrical madness is to your taste then go and enjoy.
Alanna Maclean
