The popularity of CS Lewis’s 1950 novel rests on the fact that it has the many-sidedness of myth. The story of four children who stumble into the kingdom of Narnia, where it has been winter for a century, can be seen in multiple ways. In Sally Cookson’s brilliantly inventive production – first seen at Leeds Playhouse two years ago – it becomes about a family of evacuees confronting the perils of wartime.
The point is made from the start, with the audience handed green identity labels, the onstage musicians playing a 1940s medley and a model train, bearing the evacuated Pevensie family, snaking its way through the countryside. But the wartime theme doesn’t stop there. The animals in Narnia sport camouflage gear, communicate through code – “Foxtrot to Badger” – and Aslan is not just a heroic lion but, in Wil Johnson’s fine performance, an inspirational leader. At one point, he announces “there will be blood, there will be tears” and he might have added sweat and toil, since he is more a substitute Churchill than a surrogate Christ.
Lewis’s book is sometimes criticised for its political and religious orthodoxy but this version is careful to suggest that, in an ideal Narnia, everyone will be equal before the law. Cookson, designer Rae Smith and movement director Dan Canham create an engrossing spectacle. Laura Elphinstone’s majestically icy White Witch appears on a mobile platform that resembles the prow of a ship; winter is evoked through billowing parachute silk and spring through an aerial ballet. The puppetry, under the direction of Craig Leo, encompasses a marmalade cat called Schrödinger and a Santa who transforms into a very human, clog-dancing accordionist. It is very much an ensemble show, although Adam Peck is credited as “writer in the room”, and Keziah Joseph as the adventurous Lucy and John Leader as the quisling Edmund stand out. Any fears that today’s children would be puzzled by the plight of wartime evacuees were also dispelled by the audience with whom I saw the show, who entered wholeheartedly into the world of Lewis’s magical fable.
At the Bridge theatre, London, until 2 February.
