The Ocean At The End Of The Lane – Duke of York’s Theatre, London

A review of The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, the National Theatre production of Neil Gaiman’s novel, now transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre. A hugely creative triumph!

Staging The Unstageable

If you had given me a copy of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and an unlimited budget to adapt it into a play, I would have said to you “Keep the money. It can’t be done.” This 2013 novel is typical Gaiman – a man returns near his childhood home for a funeral; and uncovers hidden memories. The story is somehow both extraordinary, and mundane. Themes of childhood and growing up, recognising the fallibility of your parents, underpin events of magic and myth. And, of course, there is the ocean at the end of the lane. I recently read the book with my theatre tickets already safely purchased. There were several moments where I was thinking to myself while reading: “But how? They can’t possibly have kept this bit in, it would never work!”

Well, readers, as you may have guessed, there are some people out there with a lot more imagination than me. The team behind The Ocean at the End of the Lane (including writer Joel Horwood and director Katy Rudd) have done a wonderful job. The stage adaptation makes a few smart changes, but retains the magic and wonder of the original story. I don’t want to give too much away, but the solutions involve puppetry (Samuel Wyer); incredibly designed props; and great set, lighting and sound design (respectively Fly David, Paule Constable and Ian Dickinson with music composed by Jherek Bischoff). The design evokes the warm, cosy kitchen at Hempstock Farm just as well as it does the scary in-between place of monsters and ‘hunger birds’.

An Immersive Fantasy Tale

So the set up is all there; from the time you take your seat and see the scary skeletal hedges, you know you’re in for a treat. And even better, the actors ensure that the production lives up to this promise. It can’t be easy playing a pre-teen convincingly as an adult, but Nina Towle and James Bamford do a wonderful job. This is, at its core, a story about friendship – pure, platonic, I-would-give-up-my-life-for-this-person friendship; and Towle and Bamford portray this strong bond growing from uncertain pre-teen beginnings.

But, as my theatre buddy said afterwards, there was “not a bad actor in the bunch.” Siubhan Harrison and Penny Layden as Mrs Hempstock and Old Mrs Hempstock have a warm, no nonsense, grounding presence. Grace Hogg-Robinson is the perfect annoying sister, brimming with bickering and rivalries. Laura Rogers as Ursula espouses the confidence of an adult knowing the power and authority they can wield over a child. And Nicolas Tennant navigates a dual role as the grown up boy protagonist and the boy’s father. He deftly moves between the two timeframes and brings the audience with him.

And I have to give a shout-out to the stagehands. There is something about the National Theatre (Arts Council funding?) which allows for greater risk-taking and creativity than a lot of commercial productions. A really wonderful flourish in The Ocean at the End of the Lane comes in the form of a group of black-clad stagehands. They man the puppets, allow for deft changes of scene, and repeatedly break the fourth wall in doing so. This feels important in a play where some of the characters seem almost omniscient. It works wonderfully well.

So if you don’t have tickets to this already, get them! The run has extended until mid-2022. But I say go now just in case you want to go again later on. It’s that type of play, one that will stick, half-buried, in your imagination, like the story itself in the mind of our unnamed protagonist. Don’t miss out!

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4.5/5

The Ocean at the End of the Lane on until May 2022