The Lion, the Witch, and the WardrobeDepartm
As a child, Kirstin Innes always wanted to go to Narnia. Instead, she got the next best thing: a whole day backstage at the Lyceum Theatre as they try and bring that world to life
A slan is awestruck. ‘This is amazing, man! I mean, look at this place!’ It’s not quite the level of gravity you’d expect from CS Lewis’ leonine deity-substitute, but then Aslan – or rather Daniel Williams, the actor playing him in the Lyceum Theatre’s adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – and I
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I A C N N A J : S O T O H P
18 THE LIST 27 Nov–11 Dec 2008
have just stepped behind the scenes at the huge Royal Lyceum Workshops. Housed near Murrayfield, a 12-strong team of scenic artists, carpenters and costume makers have spent the last few months bringing the world of Narnia to life. Everything from the 20 gilded gates of Cair Paravel to a pair of hairy breeks for Mr Tumnus, the child-catching faun are produced here. I always wanted to go to Narnia as a child, and somewhere deep inside me, there’s a very, very excited eight-year-old girl.
‘I am actually in awe. Look at the work these guys put in,’ says Williams, who has come up from London specially to play literature’s best- known lion. ‘As an actor, you come here, and see the workshop: the costumes, the concept, the design that goes into it, and you realise, learning lines is actually kind of easy.’ Bringing a story as loved as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to life in any form is a
risk. There are thousands of children — and inner children, like mine — who identify with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pensevie and their journey through a spare-room wardrobe into the snow-covered alternate universe, and each will have their own ideas about what that universe should look like. Combine this with the recent, CGI-laden movie, and many people’s fond memories of the 1989 BBC television adaptation, and there’s a lot of pressure on the production, as director Mark Thomson realises. ‘We did a poll around local schools, asking the kids which stories they’d most like to see a Christmas production of, and right at the top was The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s astonishing really, when you consider that book is about 50 or 60-years-old. Initially I was just terrified. I thought, no way can I put that world up there on stage; I just don’t know if we’ve got the resources to be able to do that!’