The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | |
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![]() West End promotional artwork | |
Music | Benji Bower Barnaby Race |
Lyrics | Barnaby Race |
Book | Devised by the original company Adam Peck (writer in the room and Dramaturg) |
Basis | The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis |
Premiere | 29 November 2017: West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds |
Productions | 2017 Leeds 2019 London 2021 UK tour 2022 West End 2023 Birmingham |
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is a stage adaptation of the book of the same name by C. S. Lewis, the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia . The play was devised by the original company with Adam Peck as the writer in the room.
The play follows the four Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, who evacuate wartime London to stay in the countryside, where they find a wardrobe leading to the fantasy world of Narnia. The siblings learn that their arrival was prophesied and they must rally its inhabitants under Aslan to defeat the forces of Jadis, the White Witch.
The production premiered at the Quarry Theatre of the Leeds Playhouse (then the West Yorkshire Playhouse) in Leeds running from 29 November 2017 to 27 January 2018. Produced by Elliott Harper Productions, the play was directed by Sally Cookson and designed by Rae Smith. Other creatives include movement director Dan Canham, puppetry director Craig Leo, aerial director Gwen Hales, and fight directors Rachel Bown-Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown. [1] The production featured Michael Jean-Marain, Patricia Allison, John Leader, and Cora Kirk as the Pevensies; Aslan is played by Iain Johnstone and the White Witch by Carla Mendonça. Aslan was portrayed by both a human actor and a large canopy-like puppet head that would be carried above by ensemble members.
The show made its London debut from 9 November 2019 to 2 February 2020 at the Bridge Theatre. It is largely the same production that had premiered two years prior, with a majority of the creative team, including Cookson, reuniting in the rehearsal room. [2] The cast featured Femi Akinfolarin, Shalisa James-Davis, John Leader, and Keziah Joseph as the Pevensie children; Wil Johnson as Aslan, and Laura Elphinstone as the White Witch.
A new major production of the show was announced in 2020. Directed by Michael Fentiman, the production is noted for employing the actor-muso approach, where the cast doubles as the orchestra. Though not a musical, the production adds a few songs and has a multi-disciplined cast of actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and puppeteers. Benji Bower's original score was expanded upon in development, with Fentiman bringing on Barnaby Race (with whom he had worked on Amélie) to the creative team. Other creatives include set and costume designer Tom Paris, choreographer Shanelle "Tali" Fergus, and illusion & magic consultant Chris Fisher. [3]
The puppet designs for Aslan and Schrödinger are by Max Humphries. Puppet direction is by Toby Olié, who said that the Aslan puppet design is "made of terra cotta– like a piece of ancient pottery as if he was there before anyone else". [4] Unlike its predecessor, the large puppet consists of an almost full body (minus its hind legs) that moves semi-realistically and requires 3 people to operate alongside its human counterpart: one inside the body, one for the tail, and one for the head. [4] The production embarked on its tour beginning at Curve in Leicester and starred Samantha Womack as the White Witch; Ammar Duffus, Robyn Sinclair, Shaka Kalokoh, and Karise Yansen as the Pevensies; and Chris Jared as Aslan.
After a successful UK tour, the show later transferred to the West End in 2022, beginning a limited run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London on 28 July, running into early 2023. [5] A majority of the cast reprised their roles from the UK tour, including Womack, Duffus, Sinclair, Kalokoh, and Jared as the White Witch, the Pevensies, and Aslan respectively. [3]
The production played at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre from 14 November 2023 to 28 January 2024. Casting was announced on 20 September. [6]
The production will return to the Leeds Playhouse from 18 November 2024 to 25 January 2025 before embarking on another UK and Ireland tour.
Character | Leeds | London | UK Tour | West End | Birmingham |
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2017 [7] | 2019 [8] | 2021 [9] | 2022 [3] | 2023 [10] | |
Michael Jean-Marain | Femi Akinfolarin | Ammar Duffus | Daniel Apea | ||
Patricia Allison | Shalisha James-Davis | Robyn Sinclair | Liyah Summers | ||
John Leader | Shaka Kalokoh | Jerome Scott | |||
Cora Kirk | Keziah Joseph | Karise Yansen | Delainey Hayles | Kudzai Mangombe | |
Iain Johnstone | Chris Jared | Oliver Hoare | |||
Carla Mendonça | Laura Elphinstone | Cath Whitefield | |||
Peter Caulfield | Stuart Neal | Jez Unwin | |||
Alan Francis | Dean Nolan | Sam Buttery | Julian Hoult | Samuel Morgan-Grahame | |
Lucy Tuck | Beverly Rudd | Christina Tedders | Ruby Ablett | ||
Peter Caulfield | Wil Johnson | Johnson Willis | David Birrell | ||
Ira Mandela Siobhan | Omari Bernard | Emmanuel Ogunjinmi | Shane Antony-Whitely |
The Leeds production received positive reviews. For WhatsOnStage, Matt Trueman wrote that "Cookson's staging...is strange, unsettling and scary, yet wondrous and magical all the same,...[instilling] a rich theatricality." [11]
The Bridge production also received favorable reviews. For Time Out, Andrzej Lukowski wrote, "Cookson and designer Rae Smith delight in the novel's eccentricities rather than fight them: their Narnia is a DIY-inflected nirvana where a very funny sight gag about talking animals communicating via cans on strings can sit next to Elphinstone being genuinely terrifying, swelling to enormous height as cackling fiends gather around her." [12]
The UK tour and West End production received generally positive reviews. According to Arifa Akbar for The Guardian, "Fentiman’s touring production fits this enormous West End stage like a glove. Tom Paris’s design is a wonder, with a giant clock face as a backdrop to mark the disparity between real-world time and Narnia’s parallel universe...Womack's White Witch is all hard edges and glaring looks yet resists becoming a pantomime villain." [13] Humphries' puppet designs and Olié's direction received praise; for East Midlands Theatre, Phil Lowe wrote, "The puppetry aspects are a revelation and the all roaring, all majestic vision of the giant Aslan puppet and Chris Jared’s human personification are magnificent. The much smaller puppet for Schrödinger the cat belonging to Professor Kirk (Johnson Willis) is universally loved with [the] audience." [14] Other reviews were more mixed, with Evening Standard in particular expressing disappointment over its pacing, the Aslan puppet, and one-dimensional performances. [15]
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a portal fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is the first published and best known of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Among all the author's books, it is also the most widely held in libraries. It was the first of The Chronicles of Narnia to be written and published, but is marked as volume two in recent editions that are sequenced according the stories' internal chronology. Like the other Chronicles, it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and her work has been retained in many later editions.
Mr. Tumnus is a faun in The Chronicles of Narnia books written by C. S. Lewis, primarily in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but also briefly in The Horse and His Boy and in The Last Battle. He is the first creature Lucy Pevensie meets in Narnia and becomes her first friend in the kingdom. Lewis wrote that the first Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all came to him from a single picture he had in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood. Tumnus thus became the initial inspiration for the entire Narnia series.
Jadis is a fictional character and the main antagonist of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and The Magician's Nephew (1955) in C. S. Lewis's series, The Chronicles of Narnia. She is commonly referred to as the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as she is the Witch who froze Narnia in the Hundred Years Winter.
Lucy Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. She is the youngest of the four Pevensie children, and the first to find the Wardrobe entrance to Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Of all the Pevensie children, Lucy is the closest to Aslan. Also, of all the humans who have visited Narnia, Lucy is perhaps the one that believes in Narnia the most. She is ultimately crowned Queen Lucy the Valiant, co-ruler of Narnia along with her two brothers and her sister. Lucy is the central character of the four siblings in the novels. Lucy is a principal character in three of the seven books, and a minor character in two others.
Peter Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia book series. Peter appears in three of the seven books; as a child and a principal character in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and as an adult in The Last Battle. He is mentioned in The Horse and His Boy, in which he is away on the northern frontier fighting giants, and in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which he is studying under the tutelage of Professor Kirke.
Susan Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. Susan is the elder sister and the second eldest Pevensie child. She appears in three of the seven books—as a child in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and as an adult in The Horse and His Boy. She is also mentioned in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Last Battle. During her reign at the Narnian capital of Cair Paravel, she is known as Queen Susan the Gentle or Queen Susan of the Horn. She was the only Pevensie that survived the train crash on Earth which sent the others to Narnia after The Last Battle.
Edmund Pevensie is a fictional character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. He is a principal character in three of the seven books, and a lesser character in two others.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a 2005 high fantasy film directed by Andrew Adamson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ann Peacock and the writing team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on the 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published and second chronological novel in the children's book series The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. The film is the first installment in The Chronicles of Narnia film series. It was produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.
Georgina Helen Henley is an English actress. She began acting as a child, and became known for starring as Lucy Pevensie in the fantasy film series The Chronicles of Narnia (2005–2010), which grossed over US$1.5 billion worldwide and won her several accolades. This includes nods from several critic groups and an Empire Award nomination.
In C. S. Lewis's fantasy novel series the Chronicles of Narnia, the hill of the Stone Table, or Aslan's How, is a high mound or cairn, located south of the Great River in Narnia next to the Great Woods. The How was built over the hill of the Stone Table. The word how derives from the Old Norse haugr, meaning hill or mound. In parts of England, it is a synonym for barrow.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a British BBC-produced television series that was aired from 13 November 1988 to 23 December 1990 and is based on four books of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. The first series aired was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1988, the second series aired was Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 1989 and the third series aired was The Silver Chair in 1990. This television series was produced by Paul Stone, with the teleplay by Alan Seymour. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was directed by Marilyn Fox, while Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair were directed by Alex Kirby.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a fantasy film series and media franchise based on The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of novels by C. S. Lewis. The series revolves around the adventures of children in the world of Narnia, guided by Aslan, a wise and powerful lion that can speak and is the true king of Narnia. The children heavily featured in the films are the Pevensie siblings, and a prominent antagonist is the White Witch. The franchise also includes short films, digital series, and video games.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is an action-adventure game released in 2005 by Traveller's Tales and Amaze Entertainment. The game is based on the novel-adapted movie of the same name. It was released in November before the movie for most major consoles including the GameCube, PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance. Also in 2005, a role-playing game, a strategy game and a chess game were released for wireless phone systems by Disney Mobile. A significant feature has William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell, Georgie Henley, Elizabeth Hawthorne, and Jim Broadbent reprising their roles from the film.
Aslan is a major character in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. Unlike any other character in the Narnian series, Aslan appears in all seven chronicles. Aslan is depicted as a talking lion and is described as the King of Beasts, the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, and the King above all High Kings in Narnia.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a British children's television drama first broadcast by the BBC in 1988. It was the first series of The Chronicles of Narnia that ran from 1988 to 1990.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is an animated television program that was broadcast in two parts on CBS on April 1 and 2, 1979, based on the 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.
Maugrim is a fictional character in the 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. A Narnian wolf, he is the Captain of the White Witch's Secret Police. In early American editions of the book, Lewis changed the name to Fenris Ulf, but when HarperCollins took over the books they took out Lewis' revisions, and the name Maugrim has been used in all editions since 1994.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages. Written by Lewis between 1949 and 1954, illustrated by Pauline Baynes and published in London between October 1950 and March 1956, The Chronicles of Narnia has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for television, radio, the stage, film, in audio books, and as video games.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Narnia: