At Shaw, a confounding writing choice nearly ruins an otherwise passable trip to Narnia

Globe and Mail

a day ago

Title: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Written by: Selma Dimitrijevic and Tim Carroll, adapted from the novel by C.S. Lewis
Performed by: David Adams, Kristi Frank, Élodie Gillett, Alexandra Gratton, Jeff Irving, Dieter Lische-Parkes, Jade Repeta, Kiera Sangster, Michael Therriault, Kelly Wong, Shawn Wright
Directed by: Selma Dimitrijevic
Company: Shaw Festival
Venue: Festival Theatre
City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
Year: Until Oct. 4, 2025
The Shaw Festival's production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn't horrible. Some of it's quite fun. The production is well-paced, well-costumed and occasionally well-acted.
But Selma Dimitrijevic and Tim Carroll's adaptation of C.S. Lewis's classic tale – which sees the iconic Aslan imagined for the stage not as a lion, but as a man – seems to miss the point of Lewis's source material, without adding much meaning to the story through its myriad creative liberties.
When we meet Aslan (Kelly Wong), a severed feline head hangs from his decidedly human shoulder. The Pevensie children – Lucy (Alexandra Gratton), Susan (Kristi Frank), Peter (Jeff Irving) and Edmund (Dieter Lische-Parks) – are almost as surprised as we are that Aslan, guardian of Narnia, is just as mortal as the humans they left on the other side of their magic wardrobe. When they ask about the discrepancy between the lore and the truth, the answer is, well, disappointing: Aslan appears as people want to see him.
That's a nice idea. But… surely the Pevensies want to see the creature as the lion they've been promised, no? So, too, must the patrons who purchased tickets to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – heck, it's in the title.
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It's a deeply strange choice not helped by the fact that the other creatures of Narnia are perfectly delightful animals – especially Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (Shawn Wright and Jade Repeta, respectively), dressed in whimsical furs by designer Judith Bowden. The beavers' dam is warm, cheery and folksy; the beasts' hokey demeanours, too. When the Pevensies join the rodents for supper, it's the closest this jumbled production gets to capturing the wonders of Lewis's wholly original world. (If there couldn't be a lion, I'm at least glad there could be beavers.)
The rest of the show is a more mixed affair. When we meet the Pevensies, sent away to the countryside at the onset of the Second World War, they're leaning on each other for support in their dreary new home, and hiding from the likes of Professor Kirk (David Adams) and Mrs. Macready (Kiera Sangster).
Of course, the real story starts when Lucy, the youngest Pevensie, stumbles across Narnia at the back of a coat closet, and tumbles into a world of kings, queens and permanent winter.
Lions aside, Dimitrijevic and Carroll mostly preserve the beats of Lewis's story, including the White Witch's lethal weapon of Turkish delight and a gnarly battle sequence that tops off the Pevensies' ascendancies to the Narnian monarchy.
But Dimitrijevic helms a superficial production that doesn't take advantage of the script's capacity for interesting directorial interpretation. Adams and Sangster are badly underused – I found myself wondering if imaginative doubling might have drawn sweet parallels between the Pevensies' disparate worlds – and the final battle, set to a backdrop of piercing strobe lights, is messy and under-choreographed.
Performances, too, vary throughout the cast – Gratton is the strongest of the children, followed by Lische-Parks (who's also a standout in the festival's Anything Goes). Michael Therriault's Mr. Tumnus is just right, frenetic and friendly, but Dimitrijevic and Carroll's new scenes for the faun in Act Two don't add much to his overall arc.
Wong does what he can as the titular not-lion, but the cards are stacked against him – there's only so much an actor can do to compensate for muddy writing.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might be an OK choice for young children (though the high schoolers at the performance I saw, judging by their frequent guffaws and post-show zingers, might disagree). For the little ones, Élodie Gillett's White Witch isn't especially scary, and seriously – those beavers are nearly worth the price of admission themselves. Tiny kiddos new to the world of theatre will probably enjoy them.
But on the whole, while this chronicle of Narnia isn't terrible – just blandly, forgettably fine – it's not one I'd recommend for ardent fans of C.S. Lewis. Or, you know, lions.