Australian novelist Joan Lindsay, intrigued by a true(?) or fictitious(?) event in which three teenage girls from a finishing school went on a Valentine’s Day outing in 1900 and disappeared, wrote the 1971 bestseller Picnic at Hanging Rock. Her purpose was to memorialize a mystery that had captivated the country because it has never been solved. Even if it never happened.
Struck by the novel, Peter Weir directed a shimmering 1975 film, still a cult favorite. Throughout, he presents a supposedly halcyon time, an even poetic time when several adolescent girls (at Appleyard College, run by a stern headmistress) are set free for a day to be themselves, to manifest their friendships, their schoolgirl crushes, their insecurities, their adventurous inclinations while popular local tourist site Hanging Rock looms over them in menacing invitation.
The intriguing Hanging Rock allure has been adapted as a musical, book and lyrics by Hilary Bell and music (and arrangements) by Greta Gertler Gold, and directed with somber celebratory flourish by Portia Krieger. Although comparison with previous formats may be uncalled for, they are also inevitable. The stage version has much to recommend it, but there are troublesome drawbacks.
Starting with the inherent strengths, the first thing to be said concerns the last sequence seen. The musicalized Picnic at Hanging Rock boasts a mesmerizing finish, led by what could be considered Appleyard’s Top Girl, Miranda (Gillian Han), the leader of the three vanishing girls. The finale, beautifully choreographed by Mayte Natalio, has the cast members delicately performing something suggesting a tribal ritual. During it, the disappeared but now reappearing Miranda (there’s definitely a ghost story embedded here) sings the lyric “Everything happens at the right time/Everything happens at the right place.” She’s expressing an attitude that may be overly optimistic but registers as a boldly reassuring production message.
Also on the positive side, the ensemble clearly believes in every minute of the endangered historic(?) mission they’ve begun—Miranda, who also opens the two-acter, only the most prominent figure. Others highlighted include headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Erin Davie), and teachers Miss McCraw (Kaye Tuckerman) and Mademoiselle (Marina Pires). Of the girls the stand-out is Irma (Tatiana Córdoba), the last to see the three, who tried to follow them but was curiously restrained and thereby gets to carry on mightily. She does so with commendable aggression. Two young men—Michael (Reese Sebastian Diaz) and Albert (Bradley Lewis)—who may be romantically interested in Miranda and perhaps a few others, are tangential figures but appealingly so.
Set designer Patrick Mulryan, aided by lighting designer Barbara Samuels, sees Hanging Rock, where most of the action takes place, as a realistically and metaphorically dark environ. (Samuels intermittently brightens the day melting into night). As the stage area available hasn’t the possibilities filmmaker Weir had, creating a genuinely imposing Hanging Rock is limited.
At the set’s rear, it does look as if a threatening rock is indicated by designer Zimmerman (there’s no program credit for projections), but it lacks the needed terrifying quality. Downstage there are, to be sure, two small rocklike humps meaninglessly rising a foot or three. The ultimate effect is that a grandly overwhelming world is reduced to a mere hint of the desired grim power.
And now, belatedly, to the Bell-Gold score. There’s surely a lot of it. The song list runs to twenty-five with titles like “Blood and Scandal,” “Stopped Clock,” “The Rock,” and “Disappearing.” On the other hand, the impression is that composer Gold had it in mind to conjure something akin to, say, a concerto that could be divvied up into twenty-five parts. The result—not that she truly started out with such a plan—is each song sounding like the one that preceded and will follow it. “Oh no, not that again” may be an audience member’s response as the succeeding numbers begin. Still, Gold does come up with an enchanting allegro for the ending, and hurray for that.
Departing note: When in the course of action Albert learns of the picnic’s upheaval (there is some eating done with no ants mentioned), he sings, “Nobody should ever have to disappear.” In the context it may seem like Bell wanting to include a takeaway message about the individual’s right to remain forever alive in some way, shape or form. Not a bad thought with which to send off the exiting crowd.
Picnic at Hanging Rock opened December 18, 2025, at Greenwich House Theater and runs through January 17, 2026. Tickets and information: picnicthemusical.com
