Book and Lyrics: Lucy Kirkwood
Music and Lyrics: Dave Malloy
Director: Lyndsey Turner
As you get older, the childhood villains that frightened you are cast in a whole new light, and while figures like Scrooge and Roald Dahl’s Grand High Witch may terrify your children, as tired adults, maybe these baddies still have a purpose. Singing Wouldn’t It Be Nice, the Grand High Witch wants to rid the world of all the children giving parents back their freedom and fun, and, in the National Theatre’s new musical adaptation of The Witches, Kathryn Kingsley brings such a sultry conviction to the song that for a split-second you might even be tempted to agree with her.
It is one of many great moments in a production that sets a high bar for itself from the beginning and has thought very carefully about how to translate a beloved children’s story to the stage. Following last year’s disappointing Christmas family show, Hex, Lucy Kirkwood and Dave Malloy have learned that excellent production values still need a strong plot and interesting characters to hold the attention of their audience whatever their ages, and this adaptation starts with Dahl whose original story is retained both in the larger developments and the small details that make his work so consuming for children.
10-year-old Luke loses his parents in a car crash and is looked after by his elderly Norwegian grandmother who is obsessed with hunting witches living among the population and secretly bumping off children. When a health scare takes them to a hotel in Bournemouth, Luke and Gran accidentally find themselves at a convention of all British witches with a dastardly plan to wipe out all children in the coming weeks.
Using Dahl’s architecture, Kirkwood and Malloy have written a very witty and incredibly entertaining show, blending the silly with the scary to excellent effect and giving most of the key characters just enough substance to explain their behaviours. The text has the tiniest updates here and there – the over-excited witches take selfies with the Grand High Witch after her Zoom call and someone denigrates TikTok, but the show feels timeless in every other respect, a classic battle of good and evil that retains Dahl’s child’s-eye perspective.
And in this show almost no one is looking at the adults. Bertie Caplan as Luke stakes a claim to the entire production in the second song, Ready to Go, where Luke dreams of taking more risks and the actor then holds the night with a confidence far beyond his years. Cian Eagle-Service almost steals it from him as Bruno with a phenomenally accomplished comic performance as the sugar-loving child, and his big tap number, Bruno, Sweet, Bruno, is outstanding. Actors three or four times their age have struggled to hold the Olivier stage, yet Caplan and Eagle-Service effortlessly command the room.
The adult cast tries their best to compete; Kingsley, of course, as a siren-esque Grand High Witch who is terrifying and glamorous at the same time, Daniel Rigby gets it just right as the slightly tangential hotel manager who more than justifies his place in the story and leads an excellent chorus line of ensemble chamber maids, porters and bellhops, while even smaller roles like Irvine Iqbal’s Chef Chevalier offer additional opportunities for physical and verbal comedy.
The Witches is a little long at 2 hours and 40 minutes and doesn’t really get going until Luke and Gran arrive at the hotel with fifth song Magnificent where it really comes to life. Gran also feels underwritten and Sally Ann Triplett’s character doesn’t translate from the page as well as it could, and a little less comedy here might help to rebalance that role.
Yet a production of this scale and polish just couldn’t exist beyond the National Theatre. Lizzie Clachan’s set and costume design, Turner’s sharp and pacey direction and Stephen Mear’s choreography deliver in unison again and again, entertaining but also finding ways to surprise and delight audiences all night, particularly in the crucial conference scene that readers will know so well from Dahl’s book. A big family show to end a big year for the National Theatre.
Runs until 27 January 2024
The Reviews Hub Score:
