Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman

Adapted for the stage by Joel Horwood

National Theatre – touring Nationwide until September 2023.

 

A twelve-year-old boy unwittingly opens a gateway for a malign force to wreak havoc in his own fractured family.

One of the hardest emotions to evoke in live theatre is fear. I’ve spent over forty years in the industry, and I have seen or been involved with well over a thousand live productions. While I have enjoyed a fair few; laughed my socks off; wept; been stirred to anger; felt inspired; leapt to my feet in admiration; been bored to tears (on far too many occasions) – I have only felt genuine fear on two occasions. The first was in the early 1990s at a stage adaptation by the brilliant Brian Elsley of Alan Garner’s Elidor at Manchester’s Contact Theatre. The other was a few nights ago on New Year’s Eve at Salford’s Lowry Theatre watching the National Theatre touring production of The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s novel, but it is surely a testament to Joel Horwood’s adaptation that at no point do you feel the drama straining at its literary roots, and unlike so many stage translations, he lets the story tell itself without resorting to alienating narration. Instead, the action is driven forward by seamless stylised scene changes that almost seem to bewilder the protagonists. Initially, you think these dark figures are simply stage management shifting the furniture with a bit of added finesse, but then, gradually, you realise they are the embodiment of the forces underpinning the narrative, employing ever more complex movement, dance, puppetry, and gasp-inducing stage illusion.

The reason it’s so hard to make a stage play genuinely frightening is because the audience can so easily guess at the mechanics involved. We will only be wigged out if the story and characterisations are so strong that our resistant bungee of disbelief gains a good deal of extra elasticity. In this production, the boy’s grief for his dead mother, and anger at his failing father, allow us to see the world as he does, and so the monstrous ‘flea’ becomes a truly imposing foe. When the object of his fear anthropomorphises into the terrifying Ursula (chillingly rendered for this tour by Charlie Brooks, familiar to many as the villainous Janine from EastEnders) the production gives her truly sinister superhuman powers, that had me clutching my wife’s hand… and I’m 62 with a love for the worst that horror cinema can throw at me.

Arguably, there is a drop in momentum through the play’s second half. There’s a switch of antagonist which deflates the narrative slightly, but it’s replaced by a more heartfelt emotional throughline, with some moments of pure wonder taking us to a satisfying and moving conclusion.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane first hit the National Theatre stage back in 2019, its profile as a show disrupted by the pandemic, so it’s great that it is touring now especially at a time when cost and the unreliability of travel infrastructure make trips to the West End an insurmountable challenge for many families outside London.

The National Theatre have rated it 12+ for guidance, but I’d say that a mature 10-year-old should handle it just fine with an adult there to hang on to, and to debrief some of the more complex themes afterwards. But, be warned, this isn’t for small children, aside from the monsters there are a couple of properly scary moments which would certainly have freaked my kids out when they were little.

Verdict: The Ocean at the End of the Lane is an excellent all-round theatrical experience for adults and older children alike, proving that, when it wants to, theatre can be the most viscerally exciting of all the media, and just as scary as anything you’ll see on a movie screen. You don’t need to borrow a kid to enjoy this, and I heartily recommend catching it if it hits a theatre near you later this year. 9/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com