“I love acting,” says Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray. “It is so much more real than life.” In Daughters of Heaven the two teenage girls, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, find the lush musicals of Mario Lanza and the neo-gothic melodramas of James Mason much more real than the boring lives they lead in early 50s Christchurch.

In both plays in some of the scenes involving all the cast too many characters are over-caricatured (the society party in Dorian Gray) so that the plays lurch at times between a believable stage reality and a theatrical farrago, but some of the smaller roles are particularly well performed: Michael van Echten’s touching portrait of Herbert Rieper, Patrick Carroll’s Dr. Hulme, and Ingrid Saker’s Honora Rieper. Two stimulating evenings in the theatre.
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I went through a phase as a teenager where I watched the film Heavenly Creatures [1994] more often than was really appropriate. There was something about the story that captured my adolescent imagination: it was just so thrilling, so shocking. Lesbians! Mother killers! I couldn’t get enough. And I wasn’t alone in my macabre fascination, many of my female friends report having gone through a similar stage.

For those less familiar with the tale, Michelanne Forster’s play Daughters of Heaven [1991] centres around the case of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme: two young girls from Christchurch whose obsessive friendship leads them to beat Pauline’s mother to death with a half of a brick in a stocking. Forster uses excerpts from the girls’ diaries and from records of the trial to provide insight into the 1954 crime which has, in the words of director Sophie Roberts, “repelled and fascinated this country ever since.”

Daughters of Heaven is an excellent choice for a Long Cloud Youth Theatre production. The heady adolescent story requires an energetic and focussed cast, and offers a wide variety of roles including some really interesting and challenging parts for young women – something which is all too rare.

In just four weeks these young people have created a very strong ensemble, which rises ably to the challenges of the script. Some excellent performances stand out.

Jess Holly Bates shines as Hilda Hulme, commanding the stage and convincingly playing well above her age. Mae Grant and Vanessa Cullen as Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme respectively work together very well. Grant creates a natural and unaffected performance as Pauline, making us empathise with her awkward gaucheness, and Cullen’s Juliet is vivacious and charming, even as she attempts to manipulate the world with her naïve sexual energy. 

The whole is fast-paced and clear under the astute direction of Sophie Roberts. The conceit of the piece is that the cast play at putting on a play, beginning with an energetic scramble around the stage ‘playacting’ with a large piece of white fabric. While this idea is not a new one it manages to involve the whole ensemble and acts as a segue into the story proper, reflecting the blurred lines between fantasy and reality which complicate Juliet and Pauline’s world. 

The muted design palette of greys and sepias has a pleasant subtly historical feel. Alex Mann’s set makes a statement of Downstage’s wooden floorboards and exposed concrete cladding, with piles of dead leaves adding a picturesque touch and steamer trunks and suitcases being used to denote different spaces. Both Glenn Ashworth’s lighting design and Thomas Press’s sound design do much to support the mood and action.

Annie Kinley’s costume design is simple and charming, using focal items such as school-girl tunics and appropriate hats to indicate period and character. Some characters dressed in leggings strike me as jarringly modern touch, but I presume this is speaking to the ‘we play at putting on a play’ concept.

Long Cloud summer camp is a fantastic opportunity for young actors whose talent is obvious. I hope we continue to see them on the stage. Recommended.
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