Since 1998 the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has produced much acclaimed theatre performances of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Below is an article reviewing the play from the Sunday Express way back in December 1999.
Over in the corner of a large, hot room, a young man is strapping on knee pads. He's preparing to fight wolves and needs all the protection he can get.
"The trees are just putting their legs on," says Sue Lefton, Movement Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company's smash-hit production of the children's classic The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, pointing to some scruffily dressed guys lashing stilts to their feet.
It's the show's second year, and it has turned into something of a money-spinner. Originally brought to the stage by RSC Artistic Director Adrian Noble, it broke box office records when it opened in Stratford last year, attracting more than 120,000 theatre-goers, many of them first timers. It then transferred to London's Barbican theatre. Adjectives such as "spellbinding", "terrific" and "magical" were the reaction.
With the sheer volume of sparkle involved and a fleeting appearance by Father Christmas, "Lion" was starting to look as though it could become a holiday perennial in the tradition of Peter Pan. Written by poet Adrian Mitchell, the dramatisation strikes a perfect balance between the excitement of a West End musical and the comforting familiarity of a school play. And, though everyone is very clear on the point that this is not a panto for posh people, a lot of the children who came last year had trouble restraining themselves from eloquently giving the wicked Queen of Narnia a piece of their minds.
Sticking closely to C.S. Lewis's 1950 masterpiece, the musical tells the story of Peter, Edmund, Lucy and Susan, four evacuees who walk through the back of a coat-stuffed wardrobe into Narnia, an enchanted land where a bare-knuckled fight between good and evil is taking place. They side with the lion king, cult leader Aslan and his band of animals, both natural and mythical, against the White Witch. She has imposed a reign of fear and a regime of everlasting winter on Narnia. The children are joined in their adventure by the leaders of the resistance, Mr and Mrs Beaver, who hide them and take them to Aslan so that their destiny to sit on the four thrones of Narnia may be fulfilled. This morning Mrs Beaver is in leggings, trainers and a Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves T-shirt while a couple of girls in strappy vest tops and full-length leopard tails are stalking round our feet growling at each other.
"The leopards I'm working with are very good," says Sue. "They're a nice change because most of the animals I work with are hoofed." In last year's production of the show, the hoofed animals didn't get their hooves until the last minute. "This year they've been hoofed since day one," says director Lucy Pitman-Wallace, over a hasty cheese bap, "so by this stage they're tap dancing in them."
The hooves - or boskins, to use the technical term - are like mouse cages attached to the soles of the actor's shoes. They're hard to walk in, so the unicorns and fauns and reindeer are fine-tuning some very fancy hoofwork. Apart from getting caught in the swirling masses of the Witch's "polar bear skin" coat, they've now got their clip-clopping down to a fine art.
This morning Adrian Noble has popped in to keep an eye on developments. He's sitting at a huge table, as the cast does a vocal warm-up round the piano. "What you're doing is good," shouts Sue, sounding rather like a Victoria Wood character. "Just fill it with the acting thought." We watch 14-year-old Peter, played by 26-year-old Richard Dempsey, go through a couple of rounds with his magic sword and shield against fanged Grumpskin, head wolf and the White Witch's Chief of Police. Then we visit the costume department.
Down the road from the rehearsal room is a quaint red-brick house that produces the clothes, hats, wigs and a lot of the magic for the show. We walk through a maze of rooms and corridors, through the Dyeing Department with its industrial sinks bubbling with blue liquids, past a lady carrying a box of raven feathers, up the stairs to the Hat Department, an airy grotto of jars filled with beads, spangles, sequins, bones, leaves and gemstones. The Head of Hats bustles back from lunch with bags full of M&S shopping, ready to knuckle down to an afternoon of glittering. The unicorn has already been freshened up from last year, the White Witch's sparkling bracken headdress is more or less ready but Aslan's dreadlock mane still needs work.
"It's like Christmas for all of us," says Jackie Norwood, Costumier, who has probably had it up to here with ruffs and bustles. "We don't usually get to work with stuff like this." She pulls out a leopard costume with pom-poms for spots, pair of beaver's leggings made out of raffia and a lion's tail stuck to what at first sight looks like a surgical support. The most beautiful costumes - wispy mermaid suits - are still being worked on. "The squirrels are knitted," she tells us. "So that happens out of house."
Back at the rehearsal room, Aslan - played by Patrice Naiambana - is trying on his mane, which his agent reckons makes him look like Tina Turner. Last year it slid right off a couple of times so they're working on a glue to keep it on when he's bounding through the forest.
One thing that's very different from last year is that Lion has the Disney spectacular The Lion King to contend with. "I'm desperate so see Lion King," says Assistant Costume Supervisor Louise Dodd, "but I don't think it's very fair to make comparisons. Not only are Disney's budgets astronomical compared with ours, we didn't want our animals to look like creatures. The actors still look like people - they have to act the animal quality."
"One of the reasons that the animals are not in full mask or body suit with fur," says Lucy, "is that the audience needs to have room for their imagination."
"The book is such a classic," says Estelle Kohler, who plays the White Witch, "such a national treasure, I think Adrian Mitchell thought he'd be lynched if he deviated."
And she laughs a laugh that is not a hundred miles away from a cackle.
THE WHITE WITCH
Honorary RSC member Estelle Kohler is South African by birth but has been with the company for 30 years, "man and boy". "I get terribly upset if I don't get hissed," she says on a break between evil deeds. "it means I haven't done my job." A member of the original cast, last year she juggled her part in Lion with that of Paulina in The Winter's Tale. She bases the Cruella DeVil-esque character of the White Witch partly on Marlene Detrich, partly on Margaret Thatcher: "The Witch doesn't care about human feelings," she says. "She has no conscience, none at all. I could make her camp but I try to make her totally evil. She's reigned over this place for a hundred years and it's always winter but never Christmas. That's the saddest line in the book."
PETER
This is actor Richard Dempsey's second adventure through the wardrobe, his first being 11 years ago when he played the same part in the BBC adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia. "It's more of a challenge this time," he says. "I was quite a young 14-year-old then, this is much more physical." Researching his part by following groups of schoolchildren round the Science Museum, he found the most difficult part was capturing the difference between children now and children in the 1940s. "They seem much older now. You have to strike a balance: you have to show them that it's not 1999, but you don't want to alienate them. I think I have a period face," he says. "But at least this time I don't have to wear shorts, which I'm really glad about."
THE DIRECTOR
Taking over a hit play could seem frustrating for an ambitious director, and daunting when the original director is of the calibre of Adrian Noble. Not for Lucy Pitman-Wallace. "It gives you a kind of freedom with constraint," she says. "Three of the 'children' are new, which is important because the people to whom the story happens are seeing it through new eyes." Always fixated on the theatre, Lucy accepted early on that acting was not her forte. "Besides, being the bossy boots is quite fun," she says. "The show works on different levels. There are things that the six-year-olds think are wonderful, then there are the people who pick up on the 1940s references, and then there are those who read it as kids."
THE COSTUMIER
Jackie Norwood laughs at the suggestion that the evil characters get all the best clothes. But she has to admit that the long black leather coats the wolves wear and the White Witch's sequins and enormous fur coat are "high-impact" costumes. "There are 40 people working here in the costume department." She says. "There's the Dye Department, the Wig Department, and the Hat Department. We've all got other shows going on, but it's a change to work on something that's fantasy. But aside from the fantasy of mermaids and satyrs, tree spirits and unicorns, she says, "to evoke the wartime feel of the story, a lot of the costumes are actually based around gas masks."
The Sunday Express Magazine, 12 December 1999, pp. 12 - 15
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Over in the corner of a large, hot room, a young man is strapping on knee pads. He's preparing to fight wolves and needs all the protection he can get.
With the sheer volume of sparkle involved and a fleeting appearance by Father Christmas, "Lion" was starting to look as though it could become a holiday perennial in the tradition of Peter Pan. Written by poet Adrian Mitchell, the dramatisation strikes a perfect balance between the excitement of a West End musical and the comforting familiarity of a school play. And, though everyone is very clear on the point that this is not a panto for posh people, a lot of the children who came last year had trouble restraining themselves from eloquently giving the wicked Queen of Narnia a piece of their minds.
"The leopards I'm working with are very good," says Sue. "They're a nice change because most of the animals I work with are hoofed." In last year's production of the show, the hoofed animals didn't get their hooves until the last minute. "This year they've been hoofed since day one," says director Lucy Pitman-Wallace, over a hasty cheese bap, "so by this stage they're tap dancing in them."
This morning Adrian Noble has popped in to keep an eye on developments. He's sitting at a huge table, as the cast does a vocal warm-up round the piano. "What you're doing is good," shouts Sue, sounding rather like a Victoria Wood character. "Just fill it with the acting thought." We watch 14-year-old Peter, played by 26-year-old Richard Dempsey, go through a couple of rounds with his magic sword and shield against fanged Grumpskin, head wolf and the White Witch's Chief of Police. Then we visit the costume department.
Down the road from the rehearsal room is a quaint red-brick house that produces the clothes, hats, wigs and a lot of the magic for the show. We walk through a maze of rooms and corridors, through the Dyeing Department with its industrial sinks bubbling with blue liquids, past a lady carrying a box of raven feathers, up the stairs to the Hat Department, an airy grotto of jars filled with beads, spangles, sequins, bones, leaves and gemstones. The Head of Hats bustles back from lunch with bags full of M&S shopping, ready to knuckle down to an afternoon of glittering. The unicorn has already been freshened up from last year, the White Witch's sparkling bracken headdress is more or less ready but Aslan's dreadlock mane still needs work.
This is actor Richard Dempsey's second adventure through the wardrobe, his first being 11 years ago when he played the same part in the BBC adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia. "It's more of a challenge this time," he says. "I was quite a young 14-year-old then, this is much more physical." Researching his part by following groups of schoolchildren round the Science Museum, he found the most difficult part was capturing the difference between children now and children in the 1940s. "They seem much older now. You have to strike a balance: you have to show them that it's not 1999, but you don't want to alienate them. I think I have a period face," he says. "But at least this time I don't have to wear shorts, which I'm really glad about."
Taking over a hit play could seem frustrating for an ambitious director, and daunting when the original director is of the calibre of Adrian Noble. Not for Lucy Pitman-Wallace. "It gives you a kind of freedom with constraint," she says. "Three of the 'children' are new, which is important because the people to whom the story happens are seeing it through new eyes." Always fixated on the theatre, Lucy accepted early on that acting was not her forte. "Besides, being the bossy boots is quite fun," she says. "The show works on different levels. There are things that the six-year-olds think are wonderful, then there are the people who pick up on the 1940s references, and then there are those who read it as kids."
Jackie Norwood laughs at the suggestion that the evil characters get all the best clothes. But she has to admit that the long black leather coats the wolves wear and the White Witch's sequins and enormous fur coat are "high-impact" costumes. "There are 40 people working here in the costume department." She says. "There's the Dye Department, the Wig Department, and the Hat Department. We've all got other shows going on, but it's a change to work on something that's fantasy. But aside from the fantasy of mermaids and satyrs, tree spirits and unicorns, she says, "to evoke the wartime feel of the story, a lot of the costumes are actually based around gas masks."
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