THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE at The Bridge Theatre - A roaring success?

When I was in primary school, one of my favourite books was CS Lewis' 1950 fantasy novel THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE; a gripping narrative, likeable characters, and the titanic struggle between Aslan the lion and the nasty White Witch leading to a final battle for Narnia's throne.  Then someone told me "You DO know it's all about religion don't you?" and my heart broke.  CS Lewis you utter sod.  That then put me off any fantasy-type novel or film... I just sit there waiting for the God analogy to clump like a second boot.

It was with a heavy heart that I went to see the 2005 film but found that I still could really enjoy it's story - and Aslan's mane was WELL strokeable - and to be honest I thought of that film most of the time I was watching Sally Cookson's stage production, currently playing at The Bridge Theatre.  It's definitely time for another viewing.

Did I hate it?  No.  Did I like it then?  Let's just say I got the production I expected when I heard that Sally Cookson had directed it.  Her production of PETER PAN at the National - was it REALLY three years ago? - was one of the most annoying experiences I have sat through.  But happy to say, after a first half that fairly lumped along, the second half picked up the pace and delivered some fairly neat stage images thanks to Rae Smith's designs.  Sometimes though, it might just be pleasant to see an effect onstage that is truly magical without knowing that it is just a tea-chest with a drapery thrown over it courtesy of 'poor theatre' techniques.

The show is billed as being 'conceived by the company' - how '70s - but there is a 'writer in the room' credit for Adam Peck and he certainly did well in distilling such an epic down onto the Bridge stage.  Among the standard over-stated performance with over-emphatic regional dialects, there were a few good performances - Stuart Neal was a graceful Mr Tumnus whose disappearance halfway through is keenly felt, Shalisha James-Davis and Keziah Joseph were good as Susan and Lucy Pevensie - the actors who played Peter and Edmund were fairly nondescript - and I liked Wil Johnson's commanding Aslan, although Laura Elphinstone as The White Witch was rather underwhelming.

I also thought Dean Nolan and Beverly Rudd had a good partnership as the Beavers who help the Pevensie children, and while Benji Bower's music was anodyne folky stuff, Bruno Poet worked some magic of his own with his lighting designs; a word too for the choreographed moves by Dan Canham who kept the stage traffic moving.

So there we go, an amiable 2 and a half hours that might not have done it for me - maybe my head was too full of that night's election results - but hopefully a few of the kids and teens in the audience might have seen something on the stage that made them realize the joy of live theatre and set them off on their own journey.

I must add the poster image is a wonderful design - now, where is that film version...