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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
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The Christ Church summer play is an appropriate setting for a fantasy ostensibly for children. The woodland scene fits the location perfectly, but the outdoor scenery also provides problems. It is difficult to know how to portray the perpetual winter and return of Spring which are central to the play's allegorical meaning. Likewise the singers often found it difficult to be heard in the play's occasional musical sections. Nonetheless, the cast cope admirably and produce a great evening's entertainment. Returning to the story for the first time since childhood, I realised to what extent this is a children's story. It is rather too blatantly allegorical and didactic for most tastes, but the beauty of the mysterious land of Narnia, the charm of the characters and the simple fantasy of the story more than make up for this. The costumes, a potentially thorny problem for a fantasy play without the aid of lighting effects or the distance of a large theatre, are largely excellent. Robin Ganguly, Hannah Griffiths, David Hogan-Hern and Rona Crawford, as Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy respectively all look to have come from the pages of Enid Blyton, knee-length socks, cardigans and all, and get the 'golly's', 'gosh's' and occasional 'oh my's' absolutely right. Gilbert Ramsay is perfect too as the diffident fawn, Mr Tumnus, and Benedict Protheroe and Susie Braun capture the simple optimism of Mr and Mrs Beaver wonderfully. But the best performances come from Nyree Tanielian as a fearsome White Witch, beautifully decked out for the part, and her menacing henchman Maugrim, played without a hint of self-consciousness by Matt Courtney. On the down side, I'm afraid Andrew Christie's Aslan was a bit more Bagpuss than Born Free, though how one could have create the latter effect I don't know. Best of all perhaps was director Adrian Cornell du Houx's unfussy solution to the problem of scenery, employing a roving band of 'creatures' that served as the trees of the forest and the wardrobe of the title as well as the ghostly statues created by the Witch. The cast and crew of this play clearly set out to produce a convivial evening of escapist fantasy to be enjoyed by all ages and this they have achieved marvellously. It is hard to know how much of the charm of this tale derives from nostalgia, but nonetheless the artlessness of the telling of the tale and the innocence of the characters is completely refreshing. James McInnes |