Rhoda Penmark is the perfect child. She’s 8 years old and the ideal 50’s realization of what ’30’s movie moppet Shirley Temple might have been in those times. She’s modest, intelligent, sweet, loving and with her perfect braids and freshly pressed dresses, she is a proper daughter for her loving parents. At school she gets 100 in all her deportment assessments. “Too good to be true,” enthuses her father.

Well, yes she is, in Stewart Lemoine’s chilling production of Maxwell Anderson’s 1954 psychological thriller “The Bad Seed,” taken from William March’s novella. This is the second time around for a Teatro la Quindicina production of the play – the first being some 30 years ago. The play has begun to show its age with melodramatic interludes and some stilted ’50’s dialogue but Lemoine is right at home in the milieu and gives his production all the right stuff – building incrementally from blissful happiness through growing feelings of unease and suspense – moving to disbelief, horror and shocking violence. In the hands of this ace director there are also moments of hard-hitting drama, humour and comedy. This solid production of a classic suspense story runs in the Varscona Theatre through July 27.

Rhoda (12 year old Lilla Solymos – you probably remember her remarkable performance in the title role of the Citadel’s Matilda) is growing up in a harmonious world. She has a loving mother, Christine (Nicola Elbro) and father, Kenneth (Mat Busby). She uses her charm to get pretty well everything she wants. It doesn’t take us long to see that the child is a monster – a soulless psychopath. The slow fuse of understanding begins to burn in Christine when a local boy is killed in what looks like an accident. The boy had won a highly-coveted award for penmanship and the award shows up in Rhoda’s drawer. Christine begins to look beyond her child’s mask. Achingly, she realizes that she has always sensed that there was something wrong with her perfect daughter.

Deaths continue to mount up.

Lemoine uses his extensive knowledge of music to heighten the suspense and his production team helps set both character and time (Leona Brausen – costumes, Chantel Fortin – design, Daniela Masellis – lighting).

Once again the Teatro stock company distinguish themselves in layered approaches to roles big and small. Elbro skilfully comes apart moving from a pure love for her angelic child to increasing horror at what she really is. Her pain will break your heart. Cathy Derkach sparkles as Monica, the upstairs busybody, who is totally captivated by Rhoda. She cheerfully babbles on as she assumes the role of local psychologist analyzing everyone she meets – while managing to get pretty well everything wrong. Kristi Hansen is brisk and effective as the uneasy teacher who first suspects Rhoda. Andrea House is compelling as the (drunk and distraught) mother of the drowned boy. Tough role. It is the most melodramatic character in the play and the actress goes full Tennessee Williams on it – finely balancing the character between the overwrought emotion and true pain that lies at its base. “You know more than you’re telling…” she grinds out at the child.

There are a number of fine supporting performances particularly Jeff Haslam as Christine’s father, Richard, a one-time crime novelist who knows a terrible secret, and Mark Bellamy, who is a criminologist. Their opposing views give Anderson the ability to stoke the ashes of the old ’50’s debate – is crime the result of “nature” or “nurture.” Mat Busby also plays two roles – Rhoda’s father and LeRoy, the apartment’s dim-witted handyman, who is not fooled by Rhoda’s goody-goody act but who dances too near the fire and gets burned.

Solymos is a phenomenon. Subtle, detailed and completely in control (until she is not), she inhabits the demon-child. Her braids are jaunty adjuncts to her carefully constructed character – every shrewd and practiced flounce, every sly backward glance as she leaves the room, every curtsy and artful arrangement of her perfect dress is not by an adult in the role of a child but by a child of extraordinary talent.

This is a show that could easily have fallen away into arch melodrama (see Mervin LeRoy’s 1956 potboiler film), but in the hands of a skilled director and performed by a masterful cast the 60 year old thriller still chills the blood.