Theatre / Picnic at Hanging Rock, adapted by Tom Wright from the book by Joan Lindsay. At ACT Hub, Kingston, until November 7. Reviewed by  ALANNA MACLEAN.

The program only credits the names of the cast in this show, not the many roles they play and it is very much a lean team production.

If you come expecting the lushness and atmospherics of the 1975 film you will find instead a steady clear rendition of the bones of the novel.

With not a pan pipe within earshot. Just atmosphere and sounds.

Five actors, Jessi Gooding, Karina Hudson, Thea Jade, Breanna Kelly and Paris Scharkie, play multiple parts, morphing from the schoolgirls to the teachers, servants and police as well as those who were at Hanging Rock on the day of the disappearances.

Sometimes more than one actor plays the same part, but so strong is the flow of this version of the story that this does not matter.

The Chaika Theatre cast is well co-ordinated by director Caitlin Baker on a set (also by Baker), which is basically a pit of black loose charcoal-like material backed by a tall blackboard and a few movable black boxes. The blackboard is used to name characters and to provide a silent commentary.

Tom Wright’s cleverly tightened version of the story loses quite a few of events and characters, but certainly Michael, the young upper-class Englishman haunted by the missing Miranda is there as is his friend Albert the lower-class Australian coachman and Sarah, the unhappy artistic student persecuted by formidable headmistress Mrs Appleyard.

Costumes, economically designed by Helen Wojtas to suggest the period, have a foot in modern school uniform but mostly nod toward the story’s late 19th century setting.

This director and cast respond strongly to the challenges of Wright’s very economical version of the original novel. The production remains haunted by things indigenous, deeper and older than these Europeans who dare to picnic at the ancient and deeply haunted Hanging Rock.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.