Moss and Knightley pass ‘The Children’s Hour’ test

Can the English film actress Keira Knightley and the American TV actress Elisabeth Moss carry a West End play in which they play two teachers running a 1930s girls' boarding school? Yes. Is the play - The Children's Hour - any good? A bit melodramatic, but not bad.

That's the general consensus of the London critics who saw the play at the Comedy Theatre last night after a series of previews had raised the hype surrounding its two well-known stars.

Written by Lillian Hellman and produced in 1934, The Children's Hour was quickly banned because of its treatment of the issue of homosexuality. The two women's lives unravel when one of the schoolgirls starts a malicious rumour about them being lesbian lovers.

The Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington says Knightley and Moss are "as potent a combination on stage as at the box office". He praised Moss as "captivating" and "subtle", but felt that Knightley only hit her stride towards the end, at which point she was "excellent in her climatic encounter with her fiance [Tobias Menzies]".

Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph was also impressed by the two stars, calling Moss's performance "fascinatingly conflicted... as subtle as it is strong".

Spencer famously described Knightley in her previous West End outing - The Misanthrope - as looking so thin that she needed "a few Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a couple of McDonald's Quarterpounders with cheese." This time, however, he found her less gaunt, and said she "impressively won her theatrical spurs".
 
Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail went straight for the jugular, quipping that watching Knightley was "like watching one of those plucky amateur jockeys in the Grand National".

He wasn't much kinder about Moss, saying she delivered her performance with "slightly more imagination" than Knightley - " but I could have done with more vocal variety from her".

Letts saved his praise for Bryony Hannah, the relatively unknown actress who plays the rumour-mongerer Mary. "She has that native fizz, that crackle every time she enters," said Letts. "That is the difference between a celluloid mannequin and a top-flight stage actress."

Libby Purves, reviewing the play for the Times, was of a similar mind, saying Hannah "acts the stars right off stage".

But Billington disagreed, appearing to charge Hannah with over-acting.  "One wishes her evil intent sprang from a chilling quietude instead of being frantically signalled," he wrote.

Does the play, written 80 years ago, resonate today? Billington called it "a well intentioned melodrama" with "deficiencies in the text... a flawed piece".

Spencer agreed it was "a sometimes creaky melodrama" but felt it was still a hot ticket. "Ian Rickson's atmospheric, slow-burning and ultimately enthralling production proves far more compelling that I expected," he wrote. "A powerful night in the West End." ·