An extraordinary, terrifying, uplifting evocation of childhood trauma that will leave you reeling with emotion.
It’s hard to know where to start when looking at the powerful experience that is the National Theatre’s production of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It starts innocently enough, with the return of a man to his childhood home, one is led to believe for the funeral of his father. Things get dark, fast, however, as we find ourselves in a two-hour flashback to the man’s youth, starting from the moment their lodger’s body is discovered in the family car, following a successful suicide attempt.
While the story sits firmly in the realm of magical realism, it is planted equally firmly in the psychology of a child seeking to make sense of a domino tumble of traumatic events, for which no reasonable explanation is given by an emotionally constipated father.
Through the eyes of a 12-year-old, we meet the family who lives in the farmhouse at the end of the lane, a farmhouse apparently recorded in the Doomsday Book – and which is likely to have been inhabited even before that by the very same residents we meet today. Much of what they say and do is inexplicable to the boy, who is never named beyond ‘Boy’, and everything seems magical, even the ‘best porridge ever’, served to him at his first visit to the farmhouse, and which sits in warm, caring juxtaposition to the burned toast that is his father’s daily breakfast offering.
The youngest of the farmhouse’s resident’s, Lettie, is a vibrant, bold, charismatic girl who draws the boy into her own reality, a bewildering world of monsters and magic and all is fun and games until one crosses over...
The cast must be exhausted by the end of each show. The intensity of the performance, every moment they are on stage, is what draws the audience so deeply into the story. Boy and Lettie are by turns typical tweens – fun and funny – and in the depths of a battle with the evillest of monsters, intensely physical and deeply emotional. Boy, played by Keir Ogilvy, has an innocence and vulnerability that must make every mother in the room just want to scoop him up and keep him safe. Lettie, played marvellously by Millie Hikasa, is bold and bolshie, kind and contemptuous, terribly young, yet wise beyond her years. Charlie Brooks, in the role of the interloper into Boy’s family of three, is marvellous – a sweet and kind carer, with an underlying nastiness only we, and Boy, can see. There’s not a soul on that stage who doesn’t give their all, from the name characters to the team who lift, spin, dance and carry them.
The power of this production lies not only with the actors, all of whom are superb, but in the staging. So simply done – a table here, a doorway there, but the switch from homely warmth to sinister chill can happen in an instant. Doorways provide entry to a room, but also allow in the monsters. A bath is a place of warm refuge, but also of abject terror. A fairy ring is the location of a long-gone tree, but also the only place a boy can be safe. The lighting and the sound is drama at its most dramatic, and when the monsters enter the fray, you will be pushed back into your seat by the power they wield.
It’s not all misery, however, there are shots of humour punching like light through the darkness; classic pre-teen utterances, perfectly timed one-liners, and beautifully delivered references we all recognise.
There’s magic (of the ‘how did she do that?!’ variety), mystery (who ARE these people?) heartbreak (“you wouldn’t even let us visit her in hospital”) and celebration (“Looking good!”). And at the heart of it all, a record of a time in a young man’s life filled with pain, the people who carried him through it, and the necessary happy ending.
Go. It’s an experience it may take you a few days to digest, but as the woman in the row behind me said as the curtain fell: wow.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane plays at The Lowry until Sunday 8 January
