All tickets include a £1.70 restoration levy The stakes are high and they carry us all the way.VENUE Gillian Lynne Theatre, 166 Drury Lane, Holborn, London WC2B 5PW “Not all darkness can be conquered,” we are reminded and the happy ending does not feel like a foregone conclusion at all. The siblings, played efficiently by adult actors, are a little featureless at first but these are quibbles in a show that is orchestrated masterfully. The pace has a stately grandeur nothing is rushed and some scenes come to feel a little inert. Folk and ballad songs composed by Benji Bower and Barnaby Race bring a lovely musicality to the show, even if they slow the action down. Musicians appear as ghostly spectres (they also double up as far cuter woodland animals) there is martial drumming and the dissonant chords of violins and cellos and voice distortion are used to sinister effect. There is a magnificent gothicism to Jack Knowles’s elegantly creepy lighting and to Ian Dickinson and Gareth Tucker’s sound design. The central switch in setting from the professor’s home to the ice kingdom of Narnia, with the wardrobe as a gateway, is completed within seconds and the visual thrill of this transformation is exhilarating each time we see it. Even the smaller magic tricks – such as sneezes that produce flowers – bring delightful eccentricity. There is one coup de theatre in which the White Witch transforms magnificently in shape and size. The show is a development of a 2017 production directed by Sally Cookson and contains some of her signature aesthetics, including aerial work alongside white sheets that work their own homespun magic.
The magic is a marvel too, full of breathtaking tricks thanks to the help of illusionist Chris Fisher, with characters disappearing into thin air. There is fabulous hybridity to the animals: some played by actors, others by puppets, and it feels deeply considered. Max Humphries’s puppetry design and Toby Olié’s puppetry direction are perfection, not least the professor’s house cat, mischievously called Schrödinger. This doubleness is ingenious and we believe in them both. Photograph: David M Benett/Dave Benett/Getty ImagesĪslan is a truly magnificent creation, represented both by an awesome puppet (manipulated by Oliver Grant, Sean Lopeman and Shaun McCourt, full of fluid leonine motions) and by an actor (Chris Jared) with a shaggy coat and mane of hair. Note-perfect villain … Samantha Womack in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Her wolves, played by actors, are comic grotesques that scuttle disturbingly, with Maugrim (Emmanuel Ogunjinmi) a terrifying mix of robot and growling animal. Samantha Womack’s White Witch is all hard edges and glaring looks yet resists becoming a pantomime villain. The cut out circle at its centre visually builds on the idea of a portal to another world and is used to heighten the drama as figures appear in it in moments of extremis.
Tom Paris’s design is a wonder, with a giant clock face as a backdrop to mark the disparity between real-world time and Narnia’s parallel universe. Michael Fentiman’s touring production fits this enormous West End stage like a glove. The war follows them into the wardrobe which is full of repeated battle cries – everyone from the White Witch and Aslan to Mrs Beaver and Santa Claus reminds us that “war is upon us” – and Peter, the eldest child, speaks of his father flying planes, beyond Narnia.īut there is the most riveting spectacle alongside this darkness.
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