Going into this show, I knew nothing other than it is based on a book by Neil Gaiman, an author my boyfriend likes, and one of the members of the Tiger Lillies has some kind of creative involvement in it. Based on my love of Shockheaded Peter, that’s enough to get me to buy a ticket.

The action centers around a little girl named Lucy, who is convinced she hears wolves in the walls of her house. Her family doesn’t believe her, but they keep telling her something rather cryptic. They tell her there are no wolves in the walls, but if there are, and they come out of the walls, then it’s all over. What “it” is, is a mystery.

Eventually, of course, the wolves do come out of the walls, driving the humans to live outside in the garden. But they get cold and discuss where they can relocate to: mostly places where houses don’t have any walls (igloos, grass huts, outer space, etc.). Eventually Lucy convinces them there is tons of space inside the walls, so the humans escape the cold, moving back into the house to inhabit the walls. There, they rediscover old toys and gifts that they had long since forgotten about.

Meanwhile, the wolves are having a grand time in the house. They are playing with everything they can find: the record player, the vacuum cleaner, even rolling around in Mom’s homemade jam. Their antics and hijinks are hilarious and become more and more human as time goes on. Eventually, the people come out of the walls and fight to chase the wolves out of their home. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say that there are other things in the walls to watch out for. Specifically elephants.

Now, I like my theatre to look like a gothic storybook nightmare. This wasn’t quite that dark, but it comes close. The production design is flawless. It uses video projections very effectively for Lucy’s drawings and her brother’s video games. The set is simple yet effective, and the color scheme (reds and yellows) suits the fantasy quite well. Most impressive was the use of screens. We would see the inside of the house, then with the use of screens and lighting, we could see in between the rooms of the house, literally, what’s happening in the walls. The visual concept (by Julian Crouch from the Tiger Lillies) is dark and gritty, yet maintains an appropriate childlike innocence.

I have mixed feelings about the cast. The acting is all strong. The movement is amazing. The choreography could be a bit crisper (particularly the sleep scene in the garden) but I’ll chalk that up to it being the first preview performance. The best bit of movement is in the scene where they are fleeing their home, and they all perform these very impressive leaps, rolls, and flips over one another to create their frantic escape. Well done, Steven Hoggett (choreographer).

My issue with the cast, though, is the singing. First off, the music sounds un-rehearsed in spots (again, first show - forgivable). However, none of them are amazing singers. And the music (by Nick Powell) is brilliant, so I would love to hear it done by stronger singers. The show is not full of Broadway-style show stopping belty numbers, of course, but all I could think the whole time was that if this show were being done in NYC, the mediocre quality of their singing would not be tolerated by the audience. At the same time, however, shows with this much vision and creativity are extreme rarities in NYC.

The best thing in the show has to be the wolves themselves. Four puppeteers manipulate and perform a seemingly large number of wolf puppets, which in and of themselves are works of art. They’re gangly, creepy, mangy, and definitely scary. Yet somehow they manage to be funny and endearing at the same time. They remind me quite a bit of The Fire Gang from Jim Henson’s classic film, Labryinth. And it is a nice touch to have the puppeteers themselves dressed in a trendy, sleek camoflague motif instead of the traditional black. It looks cool, yet doesn’t distract from the puppets.

The show is extremely fun and entertaining, and far too short at a mere 70 minutes. I wonder if this is because of the actual length of the book. I would assume it’s quite short, as the plot is not very complex. Although it’s overall meaning could be more far-reaching, I can’t quite tell what the story is trying to say. Is it a simple children’s fantasy, or is Gaiman trying to say something else? Are the wolves a metaphor for something? Perhaps the wolves indicate something you don’t want to deal with - some kind of trauma or secret - and he’s saying you shouldn’t run from them, you should face them and take back your life.

I’m also curious about the family’s hobbies, and what they represent. The mom makes jam, the dad plays tuba, Lucy draws, and her brother plays video games. When they are expelled from their home, they — except for Lucy — are without their normal comforts and have no idea what to do with their day. When they get their house back, they immediately fall back to their normal routine. I’m not quite sure if these hobbies and the normalcy they represent are intended as good things (safe, normal) or bad (unchanging, blinding obsessiveness).

Also, what’s the significance of the things they find in the walls? Forgotten memories? Is Gaiman implying it’s good to dig up things you’ve buried or that they should be left behind? Didn’t get that.

Then there’s the whole issue of whether they’re actual wolves or magical/metaphorical wolves. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t just shoot the big dogs. I suppose they were unkillable, therefore, metaphorical.

Whatever the intent, it sure raises a lot of questions for a seemingly innocuous 70 minute-long children’s show! Highly entertaining. I hope they do a cast recording.

A fan of Mark Ravenhill’s work for some time, I have been looking forward to seeing his latest work being done at the National Theatre. His play, Citizenship, is part of a collection of three short plays (Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship) by three playwrights, all about teenagers and their own issues. The roster of plays changes each night, and on this evening I have the opportunity to watch Chatroom, by Edna Walsh, followed by Citizenship.

Chatroom is simple in its concept. Six teens meet in an internet chatroom and grow to learn detail after detail about each other, while still keeping things rather anonomous. One character, Jim, admits he has thoughts of killing himself. The others try to help him. However, two of the other teens, in a sick, self-satisfying mind game, are trying to manipulate him into actually doing it. One kid suggests he writes down a nightly affirmation, to the effect of, ‘if no one cares about me, then why should I.’ A power struggle ensues, with a young man’s life in the balance.

The ending is a bit unsatisfying, but other than the piece is enjoyable. The acting is great; these actors capture teen angst, regardless of their actual ages. I suppose we all still remember that. The comedic moments are really funny, albeit sometimes a bit easy or predictable. Andrew Garfield as Jim gives a heartbreakingly sad and real performance of teen depression. Matt Smith as William, the ringleader of the pro-suicide movement, is powerful, snide, and extremely funny at times. He starts out with a tirade asserting J.K. Rowling ought to be assassinated for what she’s done to children (killed their creativity), and slowly becomes less funny and more dark as the play progresses. A well written and performed character.

The language and subject matter is written just as it would be were real teens saying it. Teens really would be talking about Britney Spears in a chatroom. I appreciated the fact that they sounded genuine, and that the playwright didn’t make them sound like adults by putting too much of her own voice into the text. Surely a difficult task, and fully accomplished here.

The second play, Citizenship, features a much larger cast, including the same six actors from Chatroom. This play is about one boy’s struggle with his own sexuality. Huge, far reaching concepts are not explored here; the theme is simple, yet universal. He’s scared and confused. He goes to his closeted gay teacher for advice, to no avail. He has unprotected sex with his female friend, who bears his child. He starts dating an older man who is already in a relationship. At this point, he’s over the main stuggle of finding out who he is, but with that knowledge comes an entirely new batch of struggles.

Like the previous play, this one feels unsatisfying in the end. The boy decides he deserves love and all the things other people (straight people) deserve. But he’s still very unsure and has a long way to go. I suppose that’s far more true to life than a clean, decisive ending.

Of course, the play is very well performed, is funny, sad, and happy all at the same time. And similarly, uses a specifically teen-voice. Particularly good is Sid Mitchell in the leading role of Tom. I also loved Matt Smith again here as “Gay Gary,” a (not gay) stoner kid perpetually affecting a Jamaican Rasta accent.

Being a teenager is hard. I never want to have to do it again. These plays explore that theme, and are very entertaining. Nothing particularly new or different is explored here, but it still works. The plays are fascinating exactly because we’ve all been through these things before.

This retelling of Homer’s epic seemed like something I should see, based on its favorable reviews and vast publicity campaign. Although I’ve fallen prey to these draws before and found myself at a crap show, this one lives up to it’s media hype.

I’ve always believed you should never tell a story that’s been told a million times before unless you have something new and interesting to say about it. What makes this production new and unique is that they cut all the stuffiness out of Greek mythology. All the snooty, archaic, muddled language that we frequently associate with the genre is completely erased, and replaced with a wonderful accessibility. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that the show is intended for children, but the show is easily enjoyable by young and old.

David Farr’s sleek, comtemporary production uses an ensemble of only 8 actors to play the numerous characters. They employ the use of mask, puppetry, and video to create Homer’s famous mythical beasts. Particularly impressive is the Cyclops - a giant puppet operated by a person, wearing the puppet on his back so that the monster is 3 times the size of the actor, with a giant, operational spotlight for an eye. Simple yet so impressive. When he is blinded, the light, thankfully, instead of going dark, turns deep red.

When Odysseus’ men are turned to pigs by the witch Circe, the transformation occurs behind a screen, through which we see puppets representing the characters. When they reappear in front of the screen, they are in pig costume. This, and the actors’ animal movement and sound, is a comical and effective way to do the scene. The show is packed with moments which, on paper, are difficult to produce on stage, and this production tackles each of these challenges with creativity and ease.

I am particularly impressed with the malleability of the cast. The six of them play all the characters; from sailors to detectives to monsters (the exception being Stephen Noonan in the lead role of Odysseus). Most impressive are the two female members of the cast, Celia Meiras & Mia Soteriou, who convincingly portray male sailors in addition to all their female characters. The men play women too, but are unconvincing, and with them, drag is used merely for comic effect.

Stu Barker’s original score for the show is haunting and memorable, and is sung beautifully by the cast. Singing is not the focus of the show, and not everyone is a fantastic singer, but the musical numbers are still some of the best parts of the show. The music has an ethereal, eastern-European-gypsy-like quality to it. Specifically the song closing the show, a powerful dirge about finding one’s home, is breathtaking.

Another favorite moment is the scene with the Sirens. We neither see nor hear them. Odysseus orders his men to plug their ears with wax and row past the Sirens, yet he desires to hear their song for himself, so he has himself tied to a post. All we hear throughout the scene is a loud thumping (either the sound of the oars or the beating of the sailors’ hearts, not sure which), we see the sailors calmly rowing, and we see Odysseus silently screaming at his men to turn back toward the beautiful sound. Again, a powerful, creative way to portray a potentially difficult scene.

An epic tale brought back to life by a brilliant creative team and a marvelously talented ensemble cast, David Farr’s version of the Odyssey is storytelling at it’s best.