Lucy Kirkwood and Dave Malloy’s musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches is the first major musical drawn from the singular repertoire of Dahl’s work since the runaway success Matilda in 2010 and it shows every sign of reaching the same level of popular acclaim. The show perfectly balances the dark, scary elements of the eccentric tale with vivid, heart-warming and properly comic interludes. It is utterly beguiling: the best thing I’ve seen on stage this year.
At the outset, 10-year-old Luke (played by startlingly talented Bertie Caplan on the night that I saw the show), tragically loses his parents in a car crash, and goes to live with his fabulously outlandish, witch-hunting Norwegian grandmother. Sally Ann Triplett clearly relishes the role: chomping cigars, wielding a crossbow, and even at one point playing poker with a garden gnome.
She cautions Luke that witches live among us – as we learn in the rollicking opening number. In fact, they covertly employ the tropes of stereotypical femininity as a facade for their depraved endeavours: teaching yoga, baking, and knitting cardigans. But their ultimate, twisted aim is to “squish and sqeulch” little children.
There’s intricate lyrical detail, and gags galore in every nook and cranny of this enchanting show. Kirkwood’s script is stuffed with effervescent one-liners, and the lyrics of Malloy’s songs - especially ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice?’, sung by Grand High Witch (played with panache by Katherine Kingsley) positively glint with witty menace.
The darkness of Dahl’s story (the abominable witches with their blistered bald heads and claw-like hands and their transformation of children into inanimate objects), is juxtaposed with hilarity. The comic apex of the show is the scene at the twee hotel, Magnificent, in Bournemouth, introduced with an hysterically funny number led by Mr Stringer, the manic, Basil Fawlty-esque hotel manager. He harangues his beleaguered staff with a succession of jibes (“pull yourself together, Denise, or go back to the civil service!”), and oscillates between utter contempt for his guests (the scruffy, cigar-smoking Gran is infra dig) and obsequious simpering towards the ostentatiously wealthy Mr and Mrs Jenkins and their son, Bruno. Maggie Service and Ekow Quartey are a hoot as the snooty, pompous parents of Bruno (“one of the top five children in Oxfordshire”). Cian Eagle-Service plays Bruno as a posh, pampered, baby-faced, ladies’ man, and is one of several child performers with an astounding voice and remarkable stage presence. A wonderful vaudeville number featuring tap-dancing cupcakes and candy floss sticks and Eagle-Service in a glittery top hat is one of the highlights of the show. Indeed, Stephen Mear’s choreography throughout is a triumph.
The witches themselves shift nimbly between comic and horrific, particularly Kingsley’s egocentric Nordic Grand High Witch. As a coven, they are magnificent. Kirkwood adds some backstory, adding a personal dimension to Gran’s vendetta against the witches. Triplett sings a soulful ballad as Gran musters up her courage to execute a daring plan to outsmart the witches. In Malloy’s eclectic score, “Get Up” is Luke’s rousing anthem, the take-home ear worm of the piece.
Lyndsey Turner’s relentlessly innovative production deftly handles Luke and Bruno’s metamorphosis into mice, aided by Chris Fisher and Will Houstoun’s whimsically co-designed illusions. Lizzie Clachan’s peppy design, which involves dexterous use of screen animation, sets the pink, plush interiors of the hotel against the supernatural, cimmerian tree tendrils that impinge on the mortal world.
This adaption doesn’t flinch from the original, gloomy denouement of Dahl’s book: Luke accepts that he will see out his days in mouse form, but he puts a positive spin on it, insisting that, “it doesn’t matter what you are, or what you look like, as long as somebody loves you.” It’s a bizarre resolution - particularly in the context of the predominantly playful timbre of what has preceded, but that bizarreness is integral to the essence of the story, bearing out the assertion in the play’s opening lines: “this is not a fairy tale”. Regardless, this show is an absolute sensation.
The Witches runs until 27 January 2024
Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 9PX
To book, please visit nationaltheatre.org.uk
Katherine Kingsley as the Grand High Witch.
