This festive season The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe returns to The Leeds Playhouse, showing in The Quarry Theatre, where Leo Owen caught the show.
Having premiered in Leeds back in 2017, The Lion Witch and The Wardrobe, has since had a stint in the West End and embarked on a UK tour.
This new production is based on Sally Cookson’s original but takes the actor-muso approach with cast playing their own live backing track for musical numbers.
The production quickly sets up the war backdrop of C.S. Lewis’ classic novel with a soldier singing Vera Lynn’s “When We Meet Again” while another plays the piano and the remaining cast trickle in with accompanying instruments.
Introducing the show’s time motif, a gold clock frames the stage and the audience become evacuee children joining the Pevensie siblings in their journey to Scotland.
Director Michael Fentiman favours puppetry from the outset with Max Humphries’s designs and Toby Olié’s movement propelling a model train across the foggy stage.
Loud music and train screeches nicely capture the bewildering experience the children face before they encounter the professor’s cat Schrödinger and the titular wardrobe.
Dancing coats, falling snow and a lamppost popping out of the piano, transports us to Narnia and Mr Tumnus’ (Alfie Richards) clever canopy house.
Singing “When There was Spring”, a reflective melancholic song, Tumnus provides some Narnian backstory.
“A Hundred Years of Winter” is the show’s theme tune liberally reprised and contrasted nicely by an upbeat equally folksy number featuring a jovial Santa figure.
The White Witch’s (Katy Stephens) spell is suitably menacing, made all the more sinister by Fentiman’s dramatic direction.
Memorable too is puppetry in Edmund’s (Bunmi Osadolor) Turkish Delight sequence, reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.
The cult ritualistic Christ-like skinning of Aslan (Stanton Wright) may be scary for little ones hence the advisory age of six and above.
The only criticisms are the show’s huge warrior lion puppet feeling a tad redundant and content in the second half being too condensed, perhaps mindful of younger attention spans.
The Pevensie’s final dual narration of what becomes of Narnia is slightly anti-climactic for such a spectacular show, thankfully uplifted by a folksy dance reprisal.
Boasting a multi-talented ensemble and cracking special effects and design (Tom Paris), this new production is likely to leave a lasting impression on audiences young and old, bringing Lewis’ vision to life while truly capturing the magic of Christmas.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe shows at Leeds Playhouse from November 18 to January 25.
For more information, visit leedsplayhouse.org.uk/event/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-2/
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