Drama and Scandal in Outskirts' 'The Children's Hour'

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Photo Credit: Robert Colletta Photography

Outskirts Theatre Company embraces a taut little drama in an intimate space as it presents The Children’s Hour in the Brumder Mansion. Kira Renkas and Samantha Paige play Karen and Martha, two teachers who run a tiny all-girls boarding school in the 1930s. Ashley Retzlaff summons a sweetly sinister opportunistic selfishness as May Tilford: a troubled girl who accuses the two teachers of having a sexual relationship. The accusation threatens to shatter both of them as parents pull their students out of the school in response to the scandal.

Director Dylan K. Sladky manages quite well with the deeply engaging balance and pace of Lillian Hellman’s script. Moments of dramatic tension are allowed room to breathe without compromising the intensity of the drama. Renkas and Paige perform with style and finesse as the two teachers. Renkas deftly works the silence in some of the story’s most intensely dramatic moments. Paige plays a smartly articulate and active aggression to Renkas’ admirably reserved poise. There’s a sharply rendered dynamic between the two of them that conjures a remarkably nuanced gravity around which all of the rest of the drama orbits.

There's quite a bit of talent in and around the edges of the ensemble as well. Brittany Boeche carries inspired and smartly modulated comic theatricality as Mrs. Lily Mortar—an overly dramatic teacher at the school who slips a few wrong words at the wrong time which are heard by the wrong ears, resulting in Tilford’s accusations. Anna Lee Murray is touchingly vulnerable as the student with the unenviable task of being blackmailed into corroborating Tilford’s accusation.

Through July 29 at the Brumder Mansion, 3046 W. Wisconsin Ave. For ticket reservations, visit outskirtstheatre.org.