When: Friday 24th August
Where: ThreeSixty Theatre, Kensington Gardens
Why: NARNIA
You may know that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on C. S. Lewis and that my dearest wish as a child was to be able to bury my face in Aslan’s mane like Susan and Lucy do in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There was no way I could not go and see this play, especially because we got half price tickets on lastminute.com so it was super bargainous. I went with my mum when she was down for the bank hol (this is the first in a three-play installment from that weekend – we went on a bit of a theatre spree) and we had a brilliant time. The theatre’s inside a big round marquee with tiered seats, which is set up with picnic benches and Narnia lamposts all around it, in the shadow of Kensington Palace (where Princess Di lived for a bit, which did set my mum off on a slightly melancholy reminisce about her tragic life... bit of a downer). It’s a beautiful location though and I was so impressed with the theatre itself, even if the play had been crap I would have enjoyed my surroundings just as much.
The magic of the ThreeSixty Theatre is that the production is played in the round, which I always like, and images are projected on the inside of the tent above you, all the way round (360 degrees, in fact). This added so much atmosphere during the play – we really felt like we were in the Beavers’ dam or Mr Tumnus’s cave thanks to the graphics. They weren’t the most technically brilliant images, and were a bit basic, but were effective nonetheless and I suppose it must be fairly challenging to project all the way round an enormous marquee.
The play begins with the game of hide and seek that ends up with Lucy in the famous wardrobe, and involves the audience who have to count up to 10 as the wardrobe rises up around Lucy and transports her to Narnia. The four Pevensie children are played by baby-faced adults which was probs a good move, and they all gave solid performances. The script was good and lots of dialogue was close to the book which was pleasing and kept a simplicity and truthfulness to the story which was needed.
Brian Protheroe as the Professor, whose face you will definitely know even if the name isn’t familiar (he was Mr Bell in North and South which I think is where I knew him from), was pleasingly wise and insightful, and looked cracking in his dressing gown. The White Witch was played by Sally Dexter, who was ok at being menacing on occasion, but for the most part I found her to be just a bit camp (her mad red lipstick didn’t do much in her favour either). But then I suppose it’s impossible to beat Tilda Swinton in the film version, who was perfect. I appreciate I’m coming across as an enormous geek here.
Big shout out to the costume department whose animal creations were works of genius. The director, Rupert Goold, said that he wanted the production to have a rougher and more elemental feel and this was definitely reflected in the sort of Inuit-y outfits of the Beavers in particular. But all the creatures were great – the wolves with their weird crutch-like forearms allowing them to crawl around, and the tree spirits who slunk around on stilts and posed themselves around the edge of the stage. During the fight scene the flying creatures were also very impressive, swirling themselves around on ribbons from the ceiling. The staging was very creative actually, with an excellent use of trapdoors and the spinning stage.
One slightly low point were the songs, I can’t lie to you. It wasn’t exactly a musical but every now and then they did all burst into song. They weren’t too bad but there were no memorable tunes and none of it really captured me, and some of it was just plain awkward – I think the songs were probably what let the production down as a whole, and if they’d been of a higher standard it could have took the show to a whole new level of amazingness.
But the real star was Aslan who was just freaking amazing. He was a War Horse style puppet, propelled about by three people and voiced by the Poirot legend that is David Suchet (BRILLIANT Aslan voice. Even better than Liam Neeson – again, see film version). His movements were so subtle and perfectly executed (ooh, maybe wrong choice of word there given what happens to him later...), down to the swinging of his tail to the nodding of his head. He was even BREATHING. I was apprehensive about the death scene and not sure how it was physically going to work, espesh on a round stage where trickery can get a bit tricky. But they totally pulled it off, using a stone table with hollow legs that the actors disappeared into, only to run on again literally seconds later in a new Aslan costume, all resurrected and roaring splendidly. (I mean, I’m imagining that’s how they did it – it’s possible that it was actual deep magic going on in front of me. Who can say.) I was very impressed with him and although he didn’t look very cuddly, the way he moved was endearing and he had by far the most stage presence of any of the cast (as it should be).
It was such a unique theatre experience and really well put together, and proved extremely popular with the audience, who were made up of just as many grown-ups as children. I’m just gonna go there and say it was MAGICAL.
Brixpig x
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