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Dorfman; Sam Wanamaker Playhouse; Donmar Warehouse, LondonA Neil Gaiman adaptation delivers spooky childhood spectacle; and the teenage years of Elizabeth I and Richard III
Sometimes it is not words but light that drives a show. That is not usually the case at the National, traditionally a verbal theatre. Yet, as directed by Katy Rudd, Joel Horwood’s adaptation of The Ocean at the End of the Lane gets its dynamism and intricacy from one of the mighty talents of today’s theatre: lighting designer Paule Constable.
Neil Gaiman’s novel about childhood hauntings and growing-up terrors depends on bewilderments, illusions, surprises. A disembodied hand frisks along the floor and wags out of an empty dressing-gown sleeve; illuminated doors spring up all around the stage to frame a frightener who seems to leap unconfined from one place to another. Pale hybrid shapes loom, stretching and bending across the stage like dinosaurs made out of bubblegum. Puppetry director Finn Caldwell and Jamie Harrison, the “magic and illusions director” (maybe he should just be called “magician”?), devised these creatures and effects, but they are given definition by Constable, who surrounds them with shimmer and with darkness. Continue reading...