Wolf Lullaby

Wolf Lullaby

By Hilary Bell

Wolf Lullaby - some stories don't let you look away

Wolf Lullaby Set in a bleak, isolated Tasmanian town, nine-year-old Lizzie Gael is bright, imaginative, troublesome - and haunted by a Wolf. When a small child is murdered, suspicion begins to fall upon her, and the fragile certainties holding her family together start to unravel. 

Lizzie’s mother, Angela, is forced to confront a possibility no parent should ever have to consider: what if her own child is capable of the unthinkable? Her father Warren clings desperately to the daughter he knows and loves, while local police officer Sergeant Ray Armstrong searches for a truth that becomes increasingly difficult to define. As evidence, instinct, fear and denial collide, each must decide not only what they believe, but what they are prepared to do about it.

Inspired by real cases of children who killed, Australian writer Hilary Bell’s research included the notorious 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger in England by two ten-year-old boys, as well as the British case of child killer Mary Bell. Bell began writing the play in the same year as the Bulger murder, disturbed not only by these crimes but by society’s urgent desire to explain, condemn and find somewhere to place the blame.

The result is not a conventional crime story. Wolf Lullaby is a gripping psychological drama about childhood and innocence, nature versus nurture, parental love and responsibility, truth and lies, and our need to believe that evil belongs to somebody else. Bell refuses to provide comfortable explanations, instead placing the audience in the uncomfortable position of judge.

And somewhere within it all waits the Wolf: nightmare, imaginary companion, guilt, fear - or perhaps something darker.

How far would you go to protect your child? How well can we ever know the people we love? And when confronted by something we would rather not believe, do we search for the truth - or for the truth we can live with?

Some stories don’t let you look away.

Wolf Lullaby is one of them.