Review: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

An elderly stranger sitting next to me was weeping with emotion when this production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe drew to a close. It is a moving show. The production makes full use of puppetry, lighting and stage effects to create visual wonderment, but its greatest appeal to the emotions of an audience probably comes from the way it taps into nostalgia for a fragile, vanished world full of notions of truth, honour, courage, good humour and sacrifice in the face of frightening odds. I wondered if the unknown man was crying for the boy he was when he read the book; just as we all cry for ourselves when the gap between past and present, dreams and reality, comes to seem too great, and we feel ourselves shut out of Narnia. 

I mention this because, in the programme, director Michael Fentiman references his own boyhood reaction of overwhelming awe to the 1988 television version of the 1950 CS Lewis book; and throughout the show he seems to be seeking to induce in the audience the same child-like reaction. Set and prop designers Rae Smith and Tom Paris have played with scale, evoking a child’s eye view with wardrobe doors that are larger than life, making the White Witch tower menacingly high in the air, and using a gigantic clock face as the backdrop. The clock serves the double purpose of suggesting notions of time passing at different rates in different worlds. Through costume, dialogue, action and diction, Fentiman tirelessly accentuates the fact that the action is set in the 1940s (when courage, good humour and sacrifice were essential) and that the Pevensie children are evacuees. Once in Narnia, the good animals are represented as a community Dad’s Army, a folksy people’s front resisting the cruel rule of the icy Queen Jadis. Sam Buttery as Mr Beaver steals the scene as a kind of beaverish Captain Mainwaring, and is scolded into “Deep shame!” by Christina Tedders’s Mrs Beaver.  

The central performances are all solid, with Shaka Kalokoh as Edmund and Karise Yansen’s Lucy standing out as particularly nuanced and persuasive. Perhaps keen not to tip over into pantomime villain, Sam Womack is a touch too frigid as Queen Jadis; I found her more convincingly nasty as the child-hating housekeeper Mrs Macready. Chris Jared plays Aslan as a weary folk prophet clad in fur robes, with a huge puppet lion pacing silently and impressively beside him. It as a human man alone that he goes to his sacrifice, and is transfigured in the resurrection scene when he symbolically emerges from the glowing clock face. This scene was arguably a trifle rushed, and I was more moved by the resurrections of Edmund and Jez Unwin’s disarmingly decent Mr Tumnus. The evil spirits and monsters that crowd around to celebrate Aslan’s death are quite nightmarish – indeed, it is a show that is probably better for over 10s. 

The ensemble are kept busy with costume changes between Jadis’s wolf henchmen, the animals of Narnia. In a rather old-fashioned piece of staging, they remain on stage almost constantly to portray scenery (trains, trees and so on), evoke emotions through mime and dance, and to represent the passing of time. Cast members play instruments live on stage, cellos strapped in front of them in mid air, adding to the emotion with swelling, atmospheric music. It was a mild surprise when after a few minutes the first song started, as the show presents as a play not a musical ; and for a while I though the songs were unnecessary. Yet afterwards the tune “Away, away, away, away – o” stayed lodged in my head, with its stirring overtones of struggle and hope. 

Fentiman briefly implies an environmental message, contrasting a toxic Narnia winter with a green and natural Narnia restored, but probably wisely does not press this 21st century comparison. The uplifting values that this production underlined were the timeless ones of community, kindness, love, hope, understanding and forgiving the faults of others. 

New Wimbledon Theatre, Until 16 April

Images © Brinkhoff-Moegenburg