The Ocean At The End Of The Lane at the National Theatre is an imaginatively brilliant piece of storytelling with a short run
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane
Dorfman stage, National Theatre Until January 25, 2hrs 20mins
This is, in places, full-on scary. It has a story with hideous winged creatures that circle their human prey; a giant, obscene insect that crawls across the stage; a human hand that shoots out of unexpected places.
The stuff of nightmares is just a part of Katy Rudd’s eerie, beautiful production of Neil Gaiman’s 2013 fantasy novel. It begins with a man, at his father’s wake wandering off down the lane by his former family home.
This is where, aged 12, he befriended Lettie (Marli Siu), the local farm girl and part of a coven of rural white witches whose duckpond is a watery portal into another universe.
Aged 12, the boy (Samuel Blenkin) befriended Lettie (Marli Siu), the local farm girl and part of a coven of rural white witches whose duckpond is a watery portal into another universe
What follows is a flashback to the man’s boyhood in the Eighties. His mum has died, leaving him with his bolshie kid sister and his just-about-coping father who always burns the toast.
Then a lodger arrives. Ursula (played with a beaming Colgate smile by Pippa Nixon) is fun and fragrant, but she turns out to be as much a piece of work as Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials.
This is a play of mind-control, the invasion of evil, and the fantasy elements of Gaiman’s novel are mixed with the emotional reality of a bereaved family struggling to keep going.
A top cast includes Samuel Blenkin as the nerdy boy, and Justin Salinger (both above) as the father who commits a shocking act of child abuse that fully justifies the show’s 12-plus rating
The terrific puppetry – conjuring a bestial otherworld – is by Samuel Wyer and Finn Caldwell. Steven Hoggett’s thrilling movement work has humans defying the laws of physics.
A top cast includes Samuel Blenkin as the nerdy boy, Josie Walker as a weird and wise matriarch, and Justin Salinger as the father who – without knowing it – commits a shocking act of child abuse that fully justifies the show’s 12-plus rating.
It’s an imaginatively brilliant piece of storytelling with a ridiculously short run. It will surely be back.