'The Wolves in the Walls' review or 'My what big eyes you have.'

Wolves in the Walls - from Neil Gaiman's graphic novel
Little Angel Theatre, 29th February 2020
Written for The Guardian

After years of going to the theatre together, The Wolves in the Walls is probably the first show that my nine-year-old goddaughter Blue and I really experience together. We laugh at the same jokes, flinch at the panting raggedy wolves, and leave the theatre asking the same dazed questions.

It’s no surprise that our first wholly shared theatrical experience is an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel. Like so much of Gaiman’s work – including the National Theatre’s recent production of The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Wolves is brimming with atmosphere and ambiguity, laced with fear and doubt and refuses to provide any easy answers.

There’s a half-sketched quality about Toby Olié’s production, which feels reminiscent of Dave McKean’s original illustrations but also taps into lots of the subtle ideas explored in this seemingly simple story. Olié’s set is made up of a series of movable screens, covered with faint sketches of wolves. As young Lucy searches her family home, anxious to find the source of those strange scratching sounds in the night, the screens slide and slip around her. Solid ground disappears beneath Lucy’s feet (she mostly walks on thin air), walls become porous and shadows grow darker, stronger and somehow more real than reality itself.

Nothing in Lucy’s world is solid – expect perhaps Lucy, who is represented by a delicately carved wooden puppet. Olié’s production persuasively captures the potential loneliness of childhood. Lucy’s family start out as merely background noise: we hear Mum singing, Dad playing the tuba (terribly), and Lucy’s brother bashing away at his games console. When we finally see the family members, their puppets only have an upper torso. Family is so often depicted as a comfort in children’s fiction but here Lucy’s family is seen as something much more complicated; very much in Lucy’s life but distracted, too, and never completely present for this curious young girl.

Adam Pleeth’s songs, with lyrics by Carl Grose, are not your typically family theatre fare either. They’re hard and edgy numbers, with barely a melody but a dark and persistent pulse. Even the light relief, when it comes, isn’t all that light. When the wolves finally burst through the walls, they rip through the screens with a Stephen King-like viciousness. With the family cowering in the bottom of the garden, the wolves run riot. They dance the conga, scoff Mum’s jam, dress up in silly costumes and slide down the stairs. Blue absolutely adores the carnage but her body is stiff as a board as she laughs.

Katie Haygarth, Elisa De Grey, Michael Fowkes and Matthew Churcher do a brilliant job of fading into the background, all dressed in black, while still injecting their puppets with such personality. Mum is brave and strong but also a little manic; Dad is kind yet absent and Lucy’s brother is a slightly nutty law unto himself. But it’s the wolves themselves – with their glinting eyes and piercing howls – that make the strongest impression. After the show, Blue cries out: ‘But I STILL don’t know why the wolves were in the walls!’ Neither do I – but wasn’t it scary and fun while it lasted?