★★★★☆ A new Australian play is always exciting; one that’s also an Australian Gothic thriller, doubly so.

Wharf Theatre
August 2, 2016

Six days before The Hanging begins, 14-year-old schoolgirl Iris Hocking (Ashleigh Cummings) and her “BFFs” Hannah and Ava, disappear from their elite private school. Two days later, Iris appears at a police station alone, distressed and remembering nothing. The media is ablaze and Detective Flint (Luke Carroll), a specialist in child protection, is put on the case.

The action is set in the house of Iris’s father where Flint is making poor headway interviewing the teenager after her release from hospital. Soon after, Iris’s English teacher Ms Carrossi (Genevieve Lemon) arrives at the girl’s request she be present during the interview that is the material of this 90-minute one-act play.

Carrossi is cantankerous and fiercely intelligent, claiming “if you’re not depressed, you’re not thinking”. Neither adult knows why Iris has called her there but it turns out the teacher’s relationship with the girls is the mystery’s missing link.

^{Genevieve Lemon and Ashleigh Cummings}
To reveal more would be to spoil an extraordinarily well-executed psychological thriller by Angela Betzien, directed...