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Lore
Information and Sites directly related to Neil Gaiman and his works. |
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Myth, Magic, and the Mind of Neil Gaiman on Wild River Review
Posted Friday, April 13, 2007 by Puck at 2:08 PM PDT
Myth, Magic and the Mind of Neil Gaiman on the Wild River Review.
WRR: As time marches on and cultures collide, new cauldrons of belief are stirred and new faith systems arise from reformulated archetypes. In American Gods, you’ve presented the collision of old and new culture in a poignant way where the gods of the old world fight for survival against the deities/archetypes of the modern age. Do you feel that we are at the crossroads of belief?
No, I think that we are in more or less exactly the same place we’ve been for probably the last 250-300 years which is to say that on the one hand you have — you have the forces of science, you have materialism, you have religion as something advanced and for want of a better word, fairly liberal. And you also have fundamentalists, back to the book religion, and all of those things —I think that’s where we still are.
And it’s where we were, where we’ve been at for a long time. I find it bizarre that here we are in 2007 in a world in which there are states in America arguing about, still fighting about whether or not to allow evolution onto their syllabus, it’s bizarre and strange. And I have to say I find it quite reassuring in some ways. At the end of the day, some things really don’t change.
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Aussie Podcast
Posted Wednesday, June 14, 2006 by Puck at 2:00 PM PDT
Bruce Moyle sends this along:
I thought I would drop you a line and say we have just put up our podcasting which features a 28 minute interview with Neil from the Sydney Writers Festival. If you post it on your website, please warn your readers that the surrounding content of the podcasting is not children friendly (contains swearing).
Anyway, have a listen.
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Posted Sunday, June 4, 2006 by lucy_anne at 9:14 PM PDT
Editor's notes: Three things - Anyone who is subscribing to the Del.icio.us account or feed will have already seen these links, as that tends to get updated first. Hopefully the tags will act as indexing terms, allowing users to search there more efficiently as well.
- Anyone who would like to submit convention reports from Balticon, please e-mail lucy_anne AT verizon DOT net (yes, that's a new contact). Even a link to weblog entries would be lovely.
- And finally, I apologize for the lack of Eternals links here previously; despite the fact that I cut my teeth searching the Internet for comics-related news, I've moved over to using search engines that I have recently found out do not pick up on a majority of the websites covering that subject. Which proves you can never assume that the tools in your toolbox are applicable for every occasion.
Audio and Video Interviews Besides the ABC Queensland interview, there is an interview from ABC's Triple J radio.
Marvel has made available a podcast in three parts with Joe Quesada and Neil discussing the Eternals:Telstra/BigPond have made available streaming video from the Sydney Writers Festival. Click on the May 24th Meet the Writers presentation with Neil and Jonathan Stroud, or the May 25th Graphic Books presentation.
If anyone is archiving any of these resources, or has audio of the Wil Anderson interview, please e-mail.
Eternals Besides running an interview with Neil about the Eternals project, Newsarama has run a series of articles to bring those who do not know of the past history of the characters up to date:Newsarama also has images from Jack Kirby's Eternals story "The Day of the Gods" available. One of Marvel's news releases mentioned that the entire Kirby story would be available as a digital comic, but it does not appear to be yet - however, the Eternals Sketchbook by John Romita Jr. has been posted.
First looks at the comic are available from Newsarama (which is the only one appearing to have lettered pages), IGN, CBR, and Marvel (with information on variants). Marvel also has cover images and summaries for Issue 2 and Issue 3 available.
CBR has posted an interview with John Romita Jr. on the project.
And Marvel Spotlight #7, which will be released as the same time as the Eternals on June 21st will feature an feature length interview with Neil.
Clippings CBR's coverage of the Vertigo panel at Wizard World Philadelphia includes discussion and images from Absolute Sandman.
The 4th June Independent reviews Anansi Boys and Mirrormask; there is a brief Mirrormask review in the Birmingham Evening Mail.
The May 28th Denver Post mentions that Neil has a contribution in Polder: A Festschrift for John Clute and Judith Clute, edited by Farah Mendlesohn.
Fangoria notes that there will be a story by Neil in Shrouded by Darkness: Tales of Terror, due out in Winter 2006. Royalties from sales of the book go to DebRA, a charity working on behalf of people with the genetic skin blistering condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).
From the May 15th Kirkus Reviews:
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. Susanna Clarke. Bloomsbury USA. October 2006. 1-59691-251-0. $23.95.
For many years, the only way to experience the magic of Susanna Clarke's writing was through her rich, unconventional--and hard-to-find--short stories. That was before the success of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, her ambitious bestselling novel of dueling 18th-century British magicians.
Now Bloomsbury has gathered seven of Clarke's marvelous stories in a new collection. The title story, passed from a writing teacher to fellow author Neil Gaiman, launched Clarke's publishing career.
"I was lucky, because I didn't actually have to go and hunt for the short stories--Susanna would send them to me," Gaiman recalls. "One would arrive every few years, these absolutely magical stories, like tiny, dangerous journeys to fairy land."
Other Clarke fairy tales, some of which involve the England of Strange and Norrell, include "Mr. Simonelli or The Fairy Widower," which was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse," a story from the world of Gaiman's Stardust personally selected by him for A Fall of Stardust.
"I'm thrilled that she's finally collecting her stories," says Gaiman. "I love the idea of them being rescued from obscurity and read."
* BONUS FACT
Clarke's previous jobs include teaching English in Turin to stressed-out Fiat motor-company executives and editing cookbooks at Simon &, Schuster's Cambridge office.
From the May 15th Library Journal:
The 101 Best Graphic Novels, rev. ed. 2006. Stephen Weiner. NBM Publishing. 80p. January 2006. ISBN 1-56163-443-3. $15.95.
This is a revised second edition of a guide first published in 2001, which was itself an update of Weiner's 100 Graphic Novels for Public Libraries (1996). Along with the foreword by Neil Gaiman, it retains from the earlier editions many classics such as A Contract with God and Bone. But over half of the listings here are new, including highly acclaimed recent works like Blankets and Epileptic and also a dozen added manga, including Lone Wolf & Cub and Barefoot Gen. Other entries range from superheroes (Ultimate Spider-Man) to nonfiction (The Cartoon History of the Universe). For each book, Weiner provides a black-and-white illustration of the cover, a suggested age rating, and a brief review. The focus is on books currently available (though The Greatest Team-Up Stories Ever Told seems to have gone out of print). For this edition, Weiner has left out newspaper strip collections (except for, oddly, Classic Star Wars) and expanded his listing of recommended books about comics. This is an improvement over previous editions; no two readers would agree on the contents, but this is a recommended collection development tool for libraries and a nice guide for the general public as well.
--Steve Raiteri
Anansi Boys was also included, along with books by Virginia Hamilton, Lawrence Yep, and Isabel Allende, in ALA Booklist's Core Collection of Young Adult titles in Fantasy and Science Fiction that incorporate multicultural literature and diversity issues.
Stories about Balticon appeared in the May 25th and May 26th issues of the Baltimore Sun.
The Savannah Actors Theatre is planning on adapting Neverwhere to the stage - details may appear on their LiveJournal as well.
Coverage of the Stardust filming continues in the UK (specifically, Elm Hill) in the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press (which has a photo of "The Slaughtered Prince Inn") and the Norwich Evening News.
Also, from the 20th May Irish Independent:
...Actor David Kelly (77) believes the word retirement is obscene. "You don't retire, for Christ's sake! All those people with their three cars and four houses in Spain who work at a job they hate until they're 60and then they go on a world cruise and come home and have a heart attack... I have no intention of doing that. They'll have to take me out and shoot me."
He is currently shooting a major new film, Stardust, in the English Cotswolds along with a glittering cast which includes Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfieffer, Peter O'Toole, Sienna Miller and Ricky Gervais.
Most of the big names have - like himself - cameo roles. "It's a very beautiful fantasy about guarding a wall through which there is another world. I'm the guard at the wall. I'm 90-something years old at the beginning and I get older as the film goes on."
He laughs: "It's lovely to be playing a part that I'm too young for. That's never happened before."...
and from the 12th May Gloucestershire Echo:
Bibury is set to hit the big time as film crews descend on the Cotswolds village.
National Trust homes in Arlington Row will feature in a blockbuster called Stardust, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
The film is a fantasy set in a make-believe, magical land.
Cameras rolled at the picturesque 14th century terrace of Cotswold stone cottages overlooking the river.
The homes are a huge tourist attraction and one of the area's most photographed scenes.
But they were given the old-fashioned treatment with props including milk churns and sacks of grain.
TV aerials, modern guttering, signs and paving were disguised for the film, which is believed to be set in the 1890s.
Gallery owner Diane Breen said: "They have put in an amazing amount of work.
"There's even a fake door that slots in front of one of the National Trust doors which makes it look even older."
Bibury Trout Farm manager Ian Peters was out with his camera.
"We didn't see any of the stars but we'll be waiting with bated breath to see the film," he said.
"They were here for three days and used our car park. They had snow on the cottages' rooftops and filmed a lot at night. It was dramatic.
"People didn't do much business because of all the film crew vehicles - there must have been about 100."
The cottages were converted from a sheep house in 1600 for weavers who supplied cloth to Arlington Mill.
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The Myth of Superman
Posted Tuesday, May 23, 2006 by lucy_anne at 11:48 PM PDT
From the June 2006 Wired:
About a decade ago, Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips in the 1940s and '50s, published one of the great Odd Books of our time. In An Unlikely Prophet, reissued in paperback this spring, Schwartz writes that Superman is real. He is a tulpa, a Tibetan word for a being brought to life through thought and willpower. Schwartz also says a Hawaiian kahuna told him that Superman once traveled 2,000 years back in time to keep the island chain from being destroyed by volcanic activity. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, but it does sound like a job for Superman – all in a day’s work for a guy who can squeeze coal into diamonds. Schwartz then tells of his own encounter with Superman in a New York taxi, when he learned firsthand that Superman’s cape is, in fact, more than mere fabric. An Unlikely Prophet brings up an important question about Superman: What makes people want to meet him so badly? It’s tough to imagine a similar book about, say, Green Lantern or Captain America. Superman is different because he doesn’t really belong to the writers who’ve created his adventures over the last 68-plus years. He has evolved into a folk hero, a fable, and the public feels like it has a stake in who Superman “really” is. Schwartz quit writing Superman because his bosses were telling him to put in things that he thought were out of character. That was admirable, but really, the specific stories we tell about Superman – the what-happened and what-he-did – don’t matter that much. Superman transcends plot. We retell his tales because we wish he were here, real, to keep us safe. Everyone knows the Superman story: rocketed to Earth from the distant planet Krypton just before it explodes, raised by a loving Kansas couple, possessing powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, defends the city of Metropolis – and the world – from evil. His real-world origin is more humble: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish kids from Cleveland, created him as a character in a newspaper comic strip. But the strip didn’t sell, so they reformatted it and flipped it to a publisher hungry to buy content for one of the first comic books. When the story appeared in the premiere issue of the anthology Action Comics, kids went crazy for it, as if there had always been a Superman-shaped hole in the world and it now was filled. It’s a classic American success story on a couple of levels. Two outsiders create a new art form, and Superman – an alien in a strange land – takes off. "Given the nature of the US, it was only natural in the 1930s for our new hero to be the ultimate immigrant," says Bryan Singer, director of the new movie Superman Returns. "I’m an only child, adopted, and as a kid I identified extraordinarily with that aspect of Superman. The scene where the Kents decide to keep him always touches me." Of course, baby Clark has a special destiny. He’s literally empowered to be our salvation, endowed with all the basics – flight, strength, invulnerability – plus the wildcard powers of super hearing, heat vision, x-ray vision, and supercold breath. He used to be even more incredible; before a radical overhaul in the mid-’80s, he could move planets and run faster than the speed of light. His cape was infinitely elastic and never tore. He had super-hypnotism. In the 1978 movie, he turned back time. He’s not a superhero; he’s a demigod. What’s important, though, is how Superman uses these powers. Compared to most A-list comic characters, he has almost no memorable villains. Think of Batman, locked in eternal combat with nocturnal freaks like the Joker – or Spider-Man, battling megalomaniacal weirdos like Dr. Octopus. For Superman, there’s pretty much only bitter, bald Lex Luthor, forever being reinvented by writers and artists in an effort to make him a worthy foe. Superman’s true enemies are disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, jet planes tumbling from the sky, enormous meteors that would crush cities. Superman stands between humanity and a capricious universe. Singer’s movie hasn’t yet screened in its entirety, so no one knows what he’s going to add to the myth. The few minutes of the film that outsiders have seen (watched with a chaperone, on a DVD that gets shredded after viewing) look good, a spiritual successor to the Richard Donner films from a quarter-century ago. The special effects will be flawless. But Singer’s Superman is bound to be less interesting than his Clark Kent. Of all the relationships at the heart of the myth – Superman and Lois Lane, Superman and Jimmy Olsen, Superman and his adoptive parents – the most important is the one with his alter ego. In 1959, Jules Feiffer did a classic cartoon about that dynamic. In it, Superman "pulled this chick from the river" and, after being briefly subjected to her Freudian questions about his motivation for rescuing people all the time, he quits. He settles down and spends the rest of his life pretending to be human – going to work, watching TV. In less than a page, Feiffer encapsulates the internal war between Superman’s moral obligation to do good and his longing to be an average Joe. Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.
--Neil Gaiman & Adam Rogers
Balticon Schedule The schedule for Balticon 40, which takes place from May 26th to 29th at the Baltimore Marriott Hunt Valley Inn, has been posted to the Balticon website, (http://www.balticon.org/program.html) and is available as a PDF (http://www.balticon.org/B40pocketfinal.pdf)
Coraline Film News
From the Laika news release:
LAIKA Entertainment has cast Teri Hatcher, the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning star of the worldwide television phenomenon "Desperate Housewives," to voice a dual role opposite Dakota Fanning in its first animated feature film, Coraline. Focus Features has worldwide distribution rights to Coraline. LAIKA, Inc. president/CEO Dale Wahl and Focus CEO James Schamus made the announcement today.
The stop-motion animated feature with CG effects has been adapted by LAIKA supervising director Henry Selick from Neil Gaiman's international best-selling book Coraline. Mr. Selick is directing Coraline, and LAIKA Entertainment's director of story Mike Cachuela is co-director of the feature.
Coraline is a LAIKA Entertainment production in association with Pandemonium Films; Pandemonium president/CEO Bill Mechanic and LAIKA Entertainment's Mary Sandell are producing the feature, which is in production at LAIKA's Portland animation studio. The popular music group They Might Be Giants will provide songs for the film.
In Coraline, a young girl (Ms. Fanning) walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life -- only much better. But when this wondrously off-kilter, fantastical adventure turns dangerous and her counterfeit parents try to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home.
Ms. Hatcher will voice the role of Coraline's Mother, as well as the role of Other Mother. The two-hour second-season finale of "Desperate Housewives" aired nationwide Sunday night (May 21st). Ms. Hatcher's book "Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life," published by Hyperion, debuted this month at #4 on The New York Times best-seller list and is now at #10 on USA Today's list of best-sellers.
Mr. Wahl said, "We're delighted that one of television's most popular stars is joining this unique and exciting project. Teri's presence will provide the perfect maternal counterpart to Dakota's Coraline."
Mr. Selick, who joined LAIKA as supervising director in 2004, directed the stop-motion/live-action "James and the Giant Peach" and the stop-motion animation classic "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas," which will be re-released this fall in a digitally re-mastered 3-D version. He also directed the animation sequences in Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."
Mr. Cachuela is a renowned storyboard artist, designer and animator. With stints at Pixar and Skellington Studios, he has been the storyboard artist, animator, or conceptual artist on many of the seminal animated films of the past decade, including "The Incredibles," "Toy Story," and "Antz."
Mr. Gaiman has achieved a cult following in the worlds of comics and fantasy and children's literature, through his acclaimed and popular novels. Coraline, inspired by his own daughter's sense of adventure, was published by HarperCollins in 2002. The novel has been translated into 30 languages and won a host of honors, including the prestigious Hugo Award.
LAIKA, Inc. (www.laika.com) is owned by chairman Phil Knight, who is also co-founder and chairman of Nike. In addition to Coraline, LAIKA Entertainment is in pre-production on "Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure," a CG-animated family film which tells a story of survival, brotherly love and grand adventure set in the animal kingdom. That film is written and directed by Jorgen Klubien, a veteran storyboard artist and designer whose credits include "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas," "The Lion King," "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life," and "Monsters, Inc." The company recently purchased the rights to one of the U.K.'s current best-selling children's novels, writer/illustrator Alan Snow's "Here Be Monsters."
Throughout its history, the company has won two Academy Awards (out of five nominations); eleven Emmy Awards; eleven CLIO Awards; three London International Advertising & Design Awards; five Mobius Advertising Awards; two Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival awards; and honors from the New York International Film & TV Festival, Annecy Awards, Annie Awards, and the World Animation Celebration Festival.
Bill Mechanic and Pandemonium's initial production, "Dark Water," was directed by Walter Salles (Focus' "The Motorcycle Diaries") and released last year. Mr. Mechanic executive-produced Terrence Malick's "The New World," starring Colin Farrell and Q'Orianka Kilcher, which was also released last year.
Pandemonium's current films in development include "The Wrong 9-Year-Old," with Paul Feig directing; "Torso," with director David Fincher attached; and a project with director John Woo.
Focus Features (www.focusfeatures.com) is a motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company committed to bringing moviegoers the most original stories from the world's most innovative filmmakers.
In addition to Coraline, upcoming Focus Features releases include Woody Allen's "Scoop," starring Allen, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, and Ian McShane; Allen Coulter's "Hollywoodland," starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, and Ben Affleck; the untitled film directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Tim Robbins and Derek Luke; Shane Acker's animated fantasy epic "9," produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov and Jim Lemley & Dana Ginsburg; Kasi Lemmons' "Talk to Me," starring Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor; and David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises," starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts.
Focus Features is part of NBC Universal, one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80%-owned by General Electric and 20%-owned by Vivendi.
From the May 23rd Oregonian / Associated Press:
Teri Hatcher, who plays a ditzy but adoring single mom on TV's "Desperate Housewives," has signed up to play a mother with considerably more nefarious qualities in the first feature film from Laika Entertainment, Phil Knight's Portland animation studio.
In Coraline, adapted from a children's novel by Neil Gaiman, Hatcher will provide the voice of both the mother and the "other mother" of the young girl for whom the book is named, Laika plans to announce today. The other mother, a sinister reflection of Coraline's real mom, seeks to trap Coraline for some dark purpose.
Child star Dakota Fanning has already agreed to play Coraline in the film, due out sometime in 2008. Last week, Laika announced that it will partner with Focus Features to distribute the movie.
Nike founder Knight acquired the former Vinton Studios in 2003 and renamed it Laika last year. "Coraline," to be directed by Laika supervising director Henry Selick, is the first of two films in the early stages of production at the Northwest Portland studio.
Hatcher first became popular playing Lois Lane in the 1990s Superman TV show "Lois & Clark," but her scatterbrained character Susan Mayer on "Desperate Housewives" made Hatcher a star.
--Mike Rogoway
Additional coverage appears in Reuters / The Hollywood Reporter.
Review - Sandman Papers From the May 23rd PW Comics Week:
...By far the most serious of these new releases is Fantagraphics' The Sandman Papers, edited by Joe Sanders ($18.95 paper, ISBN 1-56097-748-5). This is a collection of academic essays concerning Neil Gaiman's now classic Sandman comics series, and demonstrates the intellectual depth that comics can achieve as literature.
Whereas many other comics professionals might resist literary analysis, Gaiman contributes an introduction in which he welcomes it, acknowledging that academics can make valid discoveries about his work of which not even he was aware.
As one might expect, several of these literary critics are fascinated by Gaiman's use of Shakespeare. The subjects range over a wide territory, from Orientalism and the use of Asian dress to the depiction of lesbian and transsexual characters to connections between Sandman and the works of Jorge Luis Borges, even to Gaiman's interaction with Sandman readers via personal appearances and his blog.
Sometimes the essayists betray insufficient knowledge of the comics traditions Gaiman draws on. For example, B. Keith Murphy argues that Alan Moore's Watchmen is a gothic horror story "disguised as a superhero comic" since, among other reasons, he unconvincingly claims Ozymandias is based on Jekyll and Hyde. (So what about the Hulk?)
On the other hand, the essays often illuminate mysteries in Gaiman's works. For example, Sanders provides a revealing reading of Gaiman's graphic novel Mr. Punch, and insightfully compares Shakespeare's attitude toward the uses of storytelling in Gaiman's Sandman to that of characters in two other Sandman tales, Calliope and even A Dream of a Thousand Cats.
Most of all, various essayists anatomize Sandman's overarching theme of the inevitability and necessity of change, in the world and in one's own life.
The essays do not necessarily fully answer the questions they raises, but as Gaiman says in his introduction, this book is a starting point for further analysis. The Sandman Papers is not for casual readers, but it will reward Sandman aficionados willing to explore further. Of these new books about comics, this is the only one that genuinely deepens one's understanding of the comics themselves.
--Peter Sanderson
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Clippings
Posted Sunday, May 14, 2006 by lucy_anne at 4:53 AM PDT
From the May 11th Hello (which has photos of the set on their website):
We are used to seeing Sienna Miller, who is famous for her boho chic style, looking cool in Ugg boots, skinny jeans and gypsy wraps. The 24-year-old looked very different when she was snapped in period costume on the set of her latest film, however.
With a green parasol resting on her shoulder and a stunning lilac ballgown covering her curves, the blonde actress was more lady of the manor than London It-Girl. Her eye-catching costume didn't look out of place against the backdrop of Castle Coombe in Wiltshire, however, as the pretty village is one of Britain's most historically authentic.
The picturesque town, which is centred around a 14th-century marketplace, has played host to the Britons, Saxons and the Normans down through the centuries. In recent years it has become accustomed to welcoming more modern visitors, as it's frequently used for filming period dramas. St Andrew's Church, which dates back to the 12th century and features a 500-year-old clock, is among the sites making it a favourite with location scouts.
Its latest guests are surely among the most glamorous to date, though. Stardust, a fantasy romance set in a magical land, sees Sienna starring alongside Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes.
From the May 12th Gloucestershire Echo:Bibury is set to hit the big time as film crews descend on the Cotswolds village.
National Trust homes in Arlington Row will feature in a blockbuster called Stardust, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
The film is a fantasy set in a make-believe, magical land.
Cameras rolled at the picturesque 14th century terrace of Cotswold stone cottages overlooking the river.
The homes are a huge tourist attraction and one of the area's most photographed scenes.
But they were given the old-fashioned treatment with props including milk churns and sacks of grain.
TV aerials, modern guttering, signs and paving were disguised for the film, which is believed to be set in the 1890s.
Gallery owner Diane Breen said: "They have put in an amazing amount of work.
"There's even a fake door that slots in front of one of the National Trust doors which makes it look even older."
Bibury Trout Farm manager Ian Peters was out with his camera.
"We didn't see any of the stars but we'll be waiting with bated breath to see the film," he said.
"They were here for three days and used our car park. They had snow on the cottages' rooftops and filmed a lot at night. It was dramatic.
"People didn't do much business because of all the film crew vehicles - there must have been about 100."
The cottages were converted from a sheep house in 1600 for weavers who supplied cloth to Arlington Mill.
From the May 11th This Is Wiltshire:
Picturesque Castle Combe has been buzzing with activity all week as Hollywood star Sienna Miller filmed scenes for her new blockbuster film Stardust.
Over the past four days, straw and turf has been laid on the roads, and shutters added outside buildings to transform the village into a film set.
Miss Miller, on-off girlfriend of Jude Law, arrived on her fourth day of filming just after 1pm where she was quickly ushered to a private booth.
The village deemed "the prettiest village in England" has been cordoned off and security guards and police are on guard until filming stops.
Leading man Charlie Cox, who has featured in The Merchant of Venice and Casanova, was seen filming from early morning yesterday.
The film boasts an all-star cast including Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes and although rumoured to be on set, Mr De Niro was nowhere to be seen yesterday.
Over 200 extras were needed for the film and actors were selected from the village to take part.
Mac Turner, of Castle Combe, was filming yesterday as an extra but was whisked away before he could talk to the Gazette.
Castle Combe Parish Council chairman Adrian Bishop said: "I believe there are quite a number of extras taken from the village and they were all bussed up to London to audition.
"It's very exciting for Castle Combe and the village has really been transformed.
Sienna plays the romantic interest, Victoria, in the film which is directed by Matthew Vaughn, the husband of supermodel Claudia Schiffer and director of Layer Cake.
Mr Vaughn said: "I am delighted to be able to work with such a stellar cast.
"I've looked forward to once again shooting in the UK."
Stardust was written by Vaughn and his writing partner Jane Goldman and is adapted from the 1997 award-winning novel written by Neil Gaiman.
Stardust, is a fantasy, adventure love story.
In the sleepy English village of Wall a young man named Tristian, Charlie Cox, goes on a quest to win the heart of his beloved, Victoria, Sienna Miller.
His journey in search of a falling star Yvaine, Clarie Danes, takes him into a magical world where he faces a witch, Lamia played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and a pirate, Captain Shakespeare, Robert De Niro.
Filming is expected to finish by Friday, weather permitting.
The release date for the film has not yet been confirmed.
From May 10th on the BBC.co.uk website (With phots and video of the set):
Castle Combe, as seen in Dr Doolittle, Poirot and Robin of Sherwood, is about to star in a major new big-budget Hollywood movie.
The "Wiltshire Mecca of Picturesque Villages" has been chosen to play the part of the sleepy English village of Wall in the fantasy-adventure-love story Stardust. But, despite it's obvious charms and English good looks, it will be battling for screen time with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.
Sienna at Castle Combe (Realplayer)
Among those signed up, for the fantasy romp, are Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Claudia Schaffer, Charlie Cox and Sienna Miller.
Plus at the helm will be super-model Schaffer's husband, and Layer Cake director, Mathew Vaughn.
Based on the critically rated novel by Neil Gaiman, the action kicks-off in the village of Wall, played by Castle Combe, "a countryside town bordering on a magical land".
It's from this sleepy hamlet that the young lad Tristian (Charlie Cox) heads off on a quest to win over the affections of local lass, Vicotria (Sienna Miller) by tracking down a falling star.
But as he journeys through this magical world he comes face to face with the witch, Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a pirate, Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro).
With a number of suitably dark and mysterious places all vying for a place in the adult fairytale... Castle Combe managed to land the role of the village of Wall.
With filming, scheduled to run from Sunday May 7th for a week, Castle Combe has undergone a bit of a make-over and emerged looking even more olde-worlde than usual (if that's possible). The main road, for instance, running through the lower village, has been turfed over and some of the already TV-aerial free cottages have had French style shutters added.
Plus over the last few days Sienna Miller has been on set, in period costume, taking advantage of the sunny weather for some exterior shots.
Filming is expected to continue, on location at Castle Combe, until the end of the week.
From the May 8th Daily Variety:
Jason Flemyng has joined Matthew Vaughn's ensemble pic Stardust at Paramount. Story centers on a young man who ventures into a magical realm to retrieve a fallen star. Flemyng will play Primus, one of two princes in line to be king.
Thesp's credits include "Snatch," "Layer Cake" and "Transporter 2."
-- Stacy Dodd
From the May 5th Hoddesdon and Broxbourne Mercury News:
Tinseltown came to Hoddesdon for the day this week when a Hollywood movie director together with star of The Office and Extras Ricky Gervais breezed into town to shoot scenes for a new star-studded film.
A fleet of cars with blacked-out windows descended on the Charlton Mead Lane Industrial Estate as the top British actor turned out to film scenes for his new movie, Stardust, at a specialist prop and location warehouse Keeley Hire Film and Television.
The fantasy flick, being written and directed by Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn - husband of Supermodel Claudia Schiffer - also stars Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Peter O'Toole, Charlie Cox, Billy Whitelaw and Sienna Miller.Publicists for the A-list project confirmed that Gervais, 45, had been filming in Hoddesdon and that Matthew Vaughn, 33, was also on set.
"They were there to film scenes for Stardust, that's all we can say," said a spokesman.
The film is being made by Paramount Pictures and is due to be released in June 2007.
The majority of filming for the movie is taking place at Pinewood Studios in Bucks and also on location in Iceland and the Isle of Skye.
Stardust is a fantasy romance adventure set in the sleepy English village of Wall and charts the adventures of young man named Tristian (Charlie Cox) who goes on a quest to win the heart of his beloved Victoria (Sienna Miller).
Although only a small part of the flick is being filmed in Hoddesdon, curious workers in Charlton Mead Lane were lapping up the action of the day.
"We noticed a lot of activity going on and posh cars with blacked-out windows going back and forth. Who'd have guessed that Ricky Gervais was here!" said one nearby office worker.
From the April 28th Norwich Evening News:
Owners of firms in historic Elm Hill hope new life will be breathed into the street when a Hollywood movie is shot on their doorstep.
Businesses have been told they will get compensation from the filmmakers when a cinema blockbuster is shot on the cobbles of the medieval thoroughfare.
But they hope to reap even more financial reward from the film, because its exposure on the big screen could draw more tourists to Norwich. As reported in the Evening News movie bosses picked Elm Hill as perfect location for a market street in the upcoming film Stardust, described as a grown-up fairy tale. Top Tinsel Town names including Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert de Niro and Claire Danes will appear in the film alongside British talent Sienna Miller.
Businesses are expected to close for one or two days of filming, proposed for June 5. Philip Goodbody of The Dormouse antique bookshop said: "We won't really know whether it is a great thing for the street until the film comes out.
"Although I have not seen any written contract I understand that there will be some compensation for closing the business while the film crew are working."
At 29a Elm Hill, Duncan McKeowan, owner of The Games Room, said he was looking forward to the street getting a bit of the limelight. He said: "I think it is good news."
Pensioners Leonard and Barbara Stevenson moved to Elm Hill 48 years ago and think the arrival of Stardust is great news.
Mr Stevenson agreed: "It is fairly quiet down this street so it will be nice to have them filming here. I don't mind at all," he said.
Collett's Curios owner Paul Collett, said he has been based on Elm Hill for a year and but will not be about on the day of filming: "If this film is a success it may help bring people in to the street."
Location manager Emma Pill was not prepared to comment on whether any big stars would be coming to the street.
Rumours have spread that Robert de Niro is the most likely star to make an appearance as people confirmed they had been approached by tabloid newspapers offering money if they were able to snap the star.
--Sara Hardman.
From the April 26th Eastern Daily Press:
One of Norfolk's most historic streets is to get a starring role in a Hollywood blockbuster featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert de Niro, it was confirmed last night.
Elm Hill, in Norwich, has been chosen above scores of streets viewed across Europe as one of the locations for Stardust, to be directed by Layer Cake's Matthew Vaughn.
The film will star a host of Hollywood hotshots including Sienna Miller and Claire Danes as well as Pfeiffer and de Niro.
But location manager Emma Pill could only confirm the film's lead actor Charlie Cox, who plays hero Tristan Thorn, would be needed in the city, adding that Pfeiffer, de Niro and Miller would definitely not be shooting there.
Vaughn, who is married to supermodel Claudia Schiffer and lives at Coldham Hall, Suffolk, is adapting Neil Gaiman's prize-winning novel of the same name into what is predicted to be one of the biggest films of 2007.
Elm Hill will play the part of a town in the kingdom of Stormhold, where the protagonist is trying to capture an elusive star for his beloved as part of the grown-up fairy tale.
The quaint cobbled street will now be transformed into a fantastical world of castle turrets and market stalls.
Some of the buildings are set to be painted and the magic of cinema will ensure there is snow and a computer generated flint archway at the end of the street.
Everything will be returned to its original glory after the shoot which is scheduled for early June.
--Lorna Marsh
From the April 27th Eastern Daily Press:
The splendour of Ely Cathedral has long attracted millions of visitors to the Cambridgeshire city.
Now film crews and Hollywood actors are heading to the Ship of the Fens to shoot the sequel to the lavish costume drama, Elizabeth...
...The news comes the same month it was revealed Norwich was among the locations chosen for a film tipped to be the blockbuster of the year.
Scenes from Stardust, an epic grown-up fairy tale starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Sienna Miller, will be shot in the city's Elm Hill.
Producers plan to change the street into a fantastical walled city, complete with an unfamiliar flint archway, differently painted houses, background fairy castle turrets, snow in the middle of summer, market stalls and a gipsy caravan.
And Ely has attracted film studios before - Donald Sutherland and Al Pacino were on location for Revolution in 1985, which was also shot in King's Lynn.
--Laura Devlin
From the April 25th Daily Express:
Hollywood came to Scotland yesterday as Michelle Pfeiffer began filming for the new fantasy blockbuster Stardust.
Pfeiffer, who plays a witch in the GBP 50million movie, braved the cold on the Isle of Skye to shoot her scenes before wrapping up in a voluminous full-length padded coat between scenes.
But there was no sign of her co-stars Robert De Niro, Sienna Miller, Claire Danes or Rupert Everett, as they wisely stayed out of the cold.
The movie, based in Victorian times, is being shot on Skye as well as Wester Ross, where the large crew and their security team have already set up camp.
The film is being directed by Matthew Vaughn, whose past films include British thriller Layer Cake. He was Guy Ritchie's best man and fell in love with Scotland at Ritchie's wedding to Madonna in December 2000.
Vaughn said: "I am delighted to be able to work with such a stellar cast in bringing the magic of Stardust to the screen." Locals in Wester Ross watched in amazement last week as their caravan park was transformed into the moviemakers' own home-from-home.
Marquees sprang up overnight and a fleet of more than 20 box vans and lorries carrying millions of pounds worth of equipment caused long tailbacks.
Stardust, set in the sleepy English village of Wall, tells the story of a young man, Tristan - played by Casanova star Charlie Cox - who is on a quest to win the heart of his beloved Victoria, played by Miller.
Tristan's adventure takes him to a fantasy world where he faces witch Lamia, played by Pfeiffer, and De Niro in the role of pirate Captain Shakespeare.
Celia Stevenson of Scottish Screen said: "A lot of hard work has gone into getting the film here. It will be marvellous for the industry."
--Tom Fullerton
There has also been coverage of the Stardust filming in newspapers including the Bath Chronicle, the New York Post, the Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail (on May 10th and April 25th), the Times, the Daily Star and the Daily Mail.
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Posted Sunday, April 23, 2006 by lucy_anne at 10:25 PM PDT
Wolves in the Walls (Theater) - Reviews From the 23rd April Sunday Times:
The Wolves in the Walls. Lyric Hammersmith ****
As well as being an entertaining piece of new theatre, this adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's children's story is an exciting new departure for British theatre.
This is the first show from the National Theatre of Scotland, a "virtual" theatre in that it has no building of its own, and exists only through the work it makes. Here, its artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, has teamed up with Julian Crouch of Improbable Theatre to produce an enchanting "musical pandemonium" that is a delight to the eye as well as the ear, and touches the heart. Told in an exotic cartoon form, the story is simple enough. This is a happy family, but father is so busy playing the tuba, mother making jam and elder brother with his PlayStation that they are oblivious to Lucy's night fears. Seeking attention, she says that there are wolves in the walls, and in a magical transformation, these creatures, cuddly and menacing by turn, are realised before our eyes.
It is a short show, suitable for seven years upwards, full of promise for the future.
--Robert Hewison
From the 18th April Telegraph:
Here's a real cracker of a family show, and one that is likely to delight parents even as it deliciously scares their offspring. It's full of ingenious theatrical magic, sudden shocks, great jokes and highly hummable songs, with a faintly trippy atmosphere that will particularly appeal to retired hippies.
The Wolves in the Walls is a co-production between the infant National Theatre of Scotland, whose first stage show this is (the company began operations with a series of site-specific pieces) and Improbable, those imaginative pioneers of theatre without frontiers.
It's in the same tradition as Shockheaded Peter, though not quite as terrifying as that nightmarish parade of gory deaths, and is recommended to anyone over seven who's not easily scared.
The Wolves in the Walls began life as an outstanding graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, with witty, disconcerting illustrations by Dave McKean. Directors Vicky Featherstone and Julian Crouch (the latter is also responsible for the splendid not-quite-real designs) remain admirably faithful to the original.
The action is set in a detached house that at first glance couldn't be more ordinary, the home of Dad, a tuba player, Mum, who makes loads of jam, our heroine Lucy and her brother who is addicted to computer games.
Everyone is so busy with their particular obsessions that Lucy seems unhappily neglected - even when she leaps into her father's lap, he keeps playing the tuba - and we wonder if the wolves might just be the product of an over-active imagination and a bid for attention.
But there are strange crackling, crunching noises coming from the walls, and though the rest of the family pooh-poohs Lucy's fears, one night all hell breaks loose, as the wolves take over the house and the family has to seek refuge in the garden.
The wolves themselves have been brilliantly designed by Crouch, horrible matted, mangy things with huge mouths with sharp teeth and horrid dangly limbs. They are puppets but you can't always tell where the puppet ends and the operator begins.
Yet, though everyone says "it's all over if the wolves come out of the walls'', they aren't quite as ferocious as they seem, turning out to be naughty rather than downright nasty, though they make a terrific mess of the house as they play video games, take the microwave for a walk on a lead and learn the art of scratch DJ-ing.
But then the family turns the tables, taking up residence in the walls themselves before a climactic battle-royal at the end, deliriously choreographed by Featherstone in a manner reminiscent of a great, silent film comedy.
There are some terrific songs and incidental music by Nick Powell, ranging from folksy stuff for Mum (Cora Bissett), classical motifs for Dad (the actor Iain Johnstone appears to be playing a euphonium rather than a tuba, but he plays it pretty well), and a hilarious air-guitar rock sequence for the brother (Ryan Fletcher).
As Lucy, Frances Thorburn gives a lovely performance of solemn concern and resourceful pluck - she actually returns to the wolf-infested house to rescue her toy pig - capturing all the anxiety and loneliness that can blight childhood. And in the final moments she springs a delightful surprise that it would be an absolute sin to reveal. Great stuff.
Until Apr 29 (tickets 0870 050 0511); then touring Scotland.
--Charles Spencer
From the 18th April Evening Standard:
It has to be a worry when a piece of theatre with a 75-minute running time starts to drag. For although there is much to admire in this "musical pandemonium" co-created by the fledgling National Theatre of Scotland and Improbable, the team behind Shockheaded Peter, there is a limit as to how long style can hold out over substance.
There is an inescapable sense of the source material - the graphic children's book of the same name by the cult writer/illustrator team of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean - being stretched to breaking point, and then being given an extra tweak. The book's premise is startlingly simple: young Lucy, who lives in domestic harmony with Mum, Dad, older brother and beloved stuffed toy pig, believes that there are wolves in the walls of their house.
Nonsense, say the others.
But since when have adults ever known anything?
Co-directors Vicky Featherstone and Julian Crouch oversee a largely sung production that works best when it gently and sweetly extols the virtues of family and domesticity. Yet there is also awkwardness, not least in the fact that, until the suitably scruffy, scraggy, shaggy wolf puppets make an appearance, the job of four of the eight cast members seems to be that of lugging bits of the set about.
The tremendously youthful looking Frances Thorburn, with her bright, sharp stare and clear singing voice, makes Lucy an engaging central focus and the voice of reason when Mum (Cora Bissett) and Dad (Iain Johnstone) are distracted by their jam-making and tuba-playing. Yet the wol ves of tricksiness have indubitably managed to slip into the supporting walls of this piece, meaning that one firm push would see the whole atmospheric creation collapse into rubble.
--Fiona Mountford
From the 17th April Times:
Lyric, Hammersmith. ***
If you thought the new National Theatre of Scotland would come into being with an adaptation of Ivanhoe launched with a blast of bagpipes in some tartan-carpeted building in Edinburgh, you thought diametrically wrong. It's not a building at all, but a peripatetic company or set of companies that was launched in March with ten site-specific shows in towns from Lerwick to Dundee and has followed them with this surreal adaptation of a children's book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean: a "musical pandemonium" for six-pluses that's now on a visit from Glasgow to West London.
"The house where I live is just like any other house," sings Frances Thorburn's sweet little Lucy, but does exaggerate just a bit. Even in Scotland there can be few dads who, like hers, spends his days playing the tuba and imagining himself a maestro, and not so many mums who, again like Lucy's, do nothing but stir jam and make music by biffing dangling jampots. But they're conventional enough to disbelieve the girl when she declares that the rumbling noise coming from the walls is made by wolves, not mice or rats or bats, as her family thinks.
Already the production -by the NTS's artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, in collaboration with the well-named Improbable Theatre -is scoring pretty high for inventiveness. Here's a cute little house in which chairs disappear through the ceiling, bits of landing and corridor walk about, and cartoons are projected on the self-same walls from which, eventually, some splendid wolf-puppets do emerge: raggety, grinning, gaping creatures who proceed to chase out the family, eat its CDs and play silly games, like dressing up as Red Riding Hood and whizzing about on scooters.
You could, I suppose, say that these lupine goofballs are Freudian versions of the weasels who commandeer Toad Hall. Some of us have reptiles or killer-spiders lurking behind the wallpaper that separates the conscious from the subconscious, and some, like prepubescent Lucy, have big, hairy, leering wolves. A pity, though, that they aren't scarier. In a Q and A section in the programme the reply to "Do wolves make good pets?" is an incontrovertible "No, wolves make very poor pets for the average person." Well, your average Smith, Jones or McTavish would find these particular wolves no more menacing or messy than your average labrador.
I thought the story got a little becalmed at times, but there's no doubting the imaginative quirkiness on offer. If ever the National Theatre of Scotland does get round to Ivanhoe, expect trombones, shadow-puppets, strobe lighting and actors on stilts.
Box office: 0870 0500511
--Benedict Nightingale
From the 9th April Daily Telegraph:
Lucy is a little girl who hears scary noises about the house. Her jam-making Mum, tuba-playing Dad and electronic-game-playing big brother are too busy to pay attention to her. Until, that is, a pack of slobbering, big-toothed, wide-jawed, lantern-eyed wolves erupts into the family home and chases them all into the garden.
The Wolves in the Walls is a very scary children's book written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean. But the National Theatre of Scotland's musical adaptation (co-produced with Improbable, the company behind the cult hit Shockheaded Peter) has, although it follows the plot, tamed the terrors. Perhaps this was a wise decision in a show intended for children from the age of seven - after all, there's a fine line between thrilling your audience and scaring it to tears.
The first part of the show is short on suspense but strong on stunning stage effects. Co-directors Julian Crouch and Vicky Featherstone have co-opted the set into the choreography of the action - walls waltz across the stage and a chair dances to the tune of the tuba. It's all very impressive, but emotionally flat. It's not until the wolves finally come out of the walls that the show really takes off. Nick Powell's score lifts it out of blandness, the puppet wolves are frightening and funny, chases are satisfyingly cartoonish, and the ending is a happy one: the wolves are ousted and the family returns to normality. Boring, normality, but then Lucy hears noises in the walls: they sound like elephants ...
'The Wolves in the Walls' tours to the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, April 12-29; Perth Theatre, May 3-8; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, May 12, 13; Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, May 18-20
--Clare Brennan
From the 5th April Indpendent:
The essence of Neil Gaiman's cult picture book The Wolves in the Walls is that like monsters under the bed, forgotten childhood terrors are only a darkened room away. What works on the heavily illustrated page, however, is not so easy to transfer to the stage, but this, it seems, is just the kind of high-risk venture which the new National Theatre for Scotland is looking for. Their "Musical Pandemonium", co-produced with the ever-inventive Improbable Theatre, has all the hallmarks of a bold statement of intent that strikes just the right note between edginess and populism.
Co-directors Vicky Featherstone and Julian Crouch tap into the surreal waking dream of Gaiman's novel, building it into a nightmare of terrifying, irrational proportions.
Lucy - an excellent Frances Thorburn - is bored. With a tuba-playing dad, a Martha Stewart of a mum, and a video-game-obsessed teenage brother, her only companions are favourite toy Pig Puppet and the four walls. But all games stop when she hears wolves thronging behind the wallpaper.
As Lucy draws on the walls, video projections trace out her scary imaginings in metre-high scribbles of steely-toothed wolves. Dad says it's mice' Mum says it's rats. Only little girls hear wolves. But as everyone ominously says, "When the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over."
Gaiman's picture book has been deftly re-imagined on an ever-changing set inspired by book illustration and animation. The first 20 minutes are perhaps a little stilted, but as soon as the hessian puppet wolves emerge snarling and howling from their wallpapered confinement, the dream-scape suddenly becomes utterly convincing.
The lupine comedy, brilliantly realised by skilful puppeteers, heightens as the rampant wild wolves of the walls become domesticated, from middle-class lair-makers to break dancing teen wolves. And beneath it all is a dark undertow of family dislocation, fear of the unknown and protection of one's own. As the wolves cower back into the walls, there is an uncomfortable suggestion that we, like Lucy, will always be able to conjure up new "threats". What's the time, Mr Wolf? It's always dinner time.--Sarah Jones
From the 5th April Financial Times:
The best aspect of this co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Improbable is that it creates an air of convincing wonderment and menace. Such perfect pitching alone marks the play as a winner. Younger theatregoers gasp at the macabre frights and slapstick humour, while grown-ups can enjoy a convergence of fine performances, the subtle ingenuity of the set design and a lightheartedly evocative live musical score.
Adapted from the picture book by the author Neil Gaiman (who added lyrics for the songs) and the illustrator Dave McKean, The Wolves in the Walls has a simple fairytale plot. Young Lucy can hear wolves lurking in the walls of her home, to the ignorance of her parents and air-guitar-playing older brother. They speculate the noises might be mice or bats, adding fearfully that if there are wolves in the walls, and they do come out, “it’s all over”. Of course the wolves do come out and the family must flee, but the show is not as ominous as this suggests. There are tensely thrilling moments – as when Lucy returns to retrieve her toy from the jaws of a sleeping wolf – but also passages of pleasing physical humour, when the oafish wolves try to get to grips with modern appliances.
The wolves themselves are expertly brought to life by three puppeteers, who threaten to steal the show. Yet Cora Bissett is magnetic as the jolly Mum, moving between speech and song as she prepares her jam, while Ryan Fletcher gives a grandstanding turn as Lucy’s show-off Brother. Iain Johnstone’s tuba- playing Dad and Frances Thorburn’s measured Lucy add quality to the show.
This flagship first full production of the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS’s artistic director Vicky Featherstone co-directs) is a rich piece of storytelling for all ages.
--David Pollock
From the 2nd April Observer:
"If the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over."
Not in Glasgow. When the wolves hit the stage at the Tramway, a good show becomes its glorious best. The National Theatre of Scotland and Improbable have collaborated in this adaptation of the scary children's book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. The Wolves in the Walls is ingeniously billed as 'a musical pandemonium' - a description that carefully avoids the cultural weight of 'opera' and takes the mumsy merriment out of 'musical' - suitable for all those 'over seven who aren't easily scared'.
It's the first time Gaiman's work has been seen in the theatre, though he's written screenplays (Beowulf is being filmed by Robert Zemeckis, Mirrormask was directed by McKean) as well as adult fantasy novels and the Sandman comic-book series. It's unlikely to be the last: this mixture of the unsettling and the shrewd makes CS Lewis look like Davina McCall: it can only be months before someone stages the amazing Coraline, in which a little girl (most of Gaiman's heroes are heroines - yeah!) discovers an alternative life in which she has an 'other mother', with buttons for eyes, and a house that becomes a photograph of itself. It's a brilliant nightmare, because so much of it is nearly normal.
The Wolves in the Walls - simply written and thoroughly creepy - is fired by Gaiman's obsession with parents who get sealed off from their children, and his fascination with secret lives. A small girl hears gnawings inside her house, and knows that wolves are in the walls. Her family don't believe her, until the lupine invaders take over: the humans scarper, but our heroine ingeniously suggests that they could live in the interstices of their own home - until they, too, are ready to come out of the walls. You could find here a story about the free-wheeling life of the unconscious, parental obtuseness, child bravery, panic about immigration. The only certain thing is that the story is always shifting: there's no dead space; those walls are heaving.
Julian Crouch, one of the designer-directors of Improbable, is the man
to animate those shifts. He's had a hand in the most imaginative theatre of the last decade: the grisly, gaudy toy-theatre of Shockheaded Peter and Sticky's 100-foot-high sellotape monster; he raised hell when he designed Jerry Springer - the Opera. He can tweak a creature from a crumpled newspaper and turn a jumble of tape into a giant spider. He doesn't make settings for dramas: his shape-changing designs are part of the action.
For The Wolves in the Walls, Crouch echoes McKean's disturbing tangle of line-drawings, sculptural paintings and photographs but also makes something entirely his own. The wolves appear first as scratchy drawings on the curtain, then torch-light eyes glow like port-holes through the fabric. You glimpse them as spiky shadow puppets, and in full-blown burlap glory as enormous, part-human, part-puppet creatures. Sometimes an actor wears a sacking beast draped like a stole: its ping-pong-ball eyes glare above swivelling jaws, while long limbs dangle to the ground like strings of sausages. Sometimes a wolf-head perches on a fully human body: one wolf-dude saunters around in jeans, hand on hip as he hoovers to the sound of jazz. A wolf-fest rampage - one on a scooter dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, another savaging a standard lamp, a third swallowed up by a tuba - and one tugging a fluffy pet on wheels, which gets mangled and spat out by the fangs of his mates - is alone worth the price of a ticket.
There are plenty of other visual treats: a house is scribbled on the curtain with a beam of light; a father's dream of tuba-playing glory is greeted by ghostly clapping hands; a boy's video game floods the stage with castles and crags. And an extraordinarily beguiling pig puppet floats like a podgy pink cherub above the wolves' snapping jaws.
Crouch's co-director is Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, who has pinpoint precision and an unusual panoramic focus. That shows, though some of the considerable talents she's brought in aren't yet at full strength. Steve Hoggett provides choreography that makes the action dance - everyone leaps, glides, sashays or elevates - but it sometimes looks too energetically arty. Nick Powell's songs - for which Gaiman has supplied some new words - are too bland: where's the really frightening number? The opening scenes of the show are goody-goody: mum dances around while making jam (waving spoons and beaming) as if in a Fifties' children's telly show.
But it will grow. Powell's composition is not just songs: it's a soundscape - with lusty riffs for Iain Johnstone's impressive tuba-playing father and a compelling steely guitar tune for the computer-game-playing son (Ryan Fletcher gives an electric performance as he skids around the stage propelled by the stuff coming out of his earphones) - of bleeps and pings and electronic buzzings. He's composed a silvery sequence for the preserve-making mother which she tinkles out on the jars she is filling: jamelan.
The show now goes on tour, to London and through Scotland. It will end up at the Ayr Gaiety, the theatre Crouch says inspired him as a young boy. Let's hope some young Crouches are in the audience: they could be carving out the theatre of the next 20 years.
--Susannah Clapp
From the 2nd April Independent on Sunday
Julian Crouch has been biding his time. True, this fantastic stage designer hasn't been lying entirely doggo since Shockheaded Peter, the crankily macabre West End hit for which he shockingly didn't win an Olivier Award. He has been abroad and conjured up a hallucinatory hell for Jerry Springer: The Opera. But now, with Wolves in the Walls, he has thrillingly returned to dark children's literature, translating it into fabulous looking, scary and funny theatre with co-director Vicky Featherstone. This is also an exhilarating premiere for Featherstone's new National Theatre of Scotland, co-producing with Crouch's company Improbable. Recommended for everyone brave and over seven, it's adapted from the children's book by Neil Gaiman about a girl called Lucy whose family flee (at least initially) from their home when nightmarish wolves leap out of the walls.
Crouch essentially captures the shadowy yet also magically glowing style of David McKean's original illustrations. At the same time, he and Featherstone play inventive theatrical games. Frances Thorburn's lonely but sturdy Lucy tucks up with her toy pig in a surreally vertical bed, at once entertaining and unsettling. During the day, when she's wandering around the house, a pack of stagehands in oddly wolfish clothes (peaked caps and jodhpurs) sneak around behind her as if it's Grandmother's Footsteps, only the building itself seems to move because they're carrying the scenery - a creepy staircase here, a bleak receding corridor there. Lucy's home is also seen from the outside, hauntingly lit up against the darkness, with her tubby, nice but self-involved dad (Iain Johnstone) squeezed into one room with his tuba while, in another, her faintly witchy mum (Cora Bissett) obsessively stirs strawberry jam. The wolves proper - when they jump out, wound round the backs of four puppeteers - are ashen and raggedy, like decomposing corpses, with big snappy jaws and long trailing legs. Yet they prove hilarious too, behaving like partying squatters crossed with big babies. One turns into a scratch DJ, using a claw, while another casually trundles through the living-room dressed up like Little Red Riding Hood.
Admittedly, at this early stage in its tour, this show isn't knocking Shockheaded Peter into a cocked hat. The helter-skelter chases, choreographed by Steven Hoggett (of Frantic Assembly), need more work and the edgy score (by Nick Powell) occasionally becomes bland.
However, at its best, this is an extraordinary musical-cum-modern opera for kids. Newcomer Ryan Fletcher has a blast as Lucy's wannabe cool brother, playing thrash rock on his air guitar. And Featherstone intelligently teases out - without spelling out - what the wolves might represent, from fears of death to marauding yobs, from poltergeists to the fantasies of domestically frustrated parents. Worth catching.
The hilarious wolves behave like partying squatters
--Kate Bassett
From the 2nd April Sunday Herald:
Rating: 4 Stars
Children’s theatre was always going to be a challenging area for the new National Theatre of Scotland. Part of the NTS’s burden is that audiences expect its work to be of a higher quality than that produced by other Scottish theatre groups.
With superb children’s companies such as Wee Stories and Catherine Wheels at large, that’s a tall order; to say nothing of the always outstanding Children’s International Theatre Festival staged in Edinburgh annually by Tony Reekie’s Imaginate company.
If The Wolves In The Walls, the NTS’s first stage production (the others having been on ferries, in glass factories and around the Glasgow subway system), is anything to go by, the already bright outlook for children’s theatre in Scotland just got rosier.
Based upon Neil Gaiman’s wonderful and unusual book (which has fabulous illustrations by Dave McKean), it is a brilliant example of how a vibrant, collaborative piece of musical theatre can grow from a well-chosen text.
The book, for those who haven’t already succum-bed to its charms, finds young Lucy much perturbed by the sounds emanating from within the walls of her creaking old house. There are, she concludes, wolves in the walls. Her pig handpuppet agrees.
Problem is, her jam-making mum, tuba-playing father and computer games-addicted brother all insist that the noises are being made by mammals of an altogether smaller size and less threatening reputation.
Perhaps they simply can’t bring themselves to accept the possibility of a wolf infestation because, as everyone knows, “when the wolves come out of the walls, it’s all over!”
The rest is children’s literary history; it’s also too good to give away. Let’s just say that when the wolves do emerge, our intrepid heroine, Lucy, is not prepared to accept the proposals of family members that they emigrate to the North Pole or outer space.
Gaiman’s tale is an excellent choice for adaptation to the stage. It has everything children love in live performance: tension, suspense, fear, courage, humour and, in this version, a fart gag.
The beauty of this presentation, a co-production between the NTS and London-based theatre group Improbable (in association with Tramway), is that it brings its own ideas to Gaiman’s text without diminishing the book.
Indeed, Gaiman provided additional lyrics for the songbook, which was collectively conceived by co-directors Vicky Featherstone (of the NTS) and Julian Crouch (of Improbable) with composer Nick Powell.
There is often something quite garish and trashy about big stage musicals for kids, but this piece is pure class. The cast, from excellent young actress Frances Thorburn (Lucy) to star of stage and screen Cora Bissett (Mum) and Wee Stories co-director Iain Johnstone (Dad), has quality written all over it; even one of the wolves is played by Scottish Critics’ Award winner Cait Davis.
Where other shows go for the “wow!” factor (think flying cars and the sort of pyrotechnics more appropriate for Chinese New Year), Featherstone and Crouch make a pitch for children’s imaginations.
Crouch also designed the sets (which are impressively faithful to McKean’s pictures in the original book), and, with the help of Natasha Chivers’s perfectly attuned lighting, the sense of the wolves preparing their invasion is realised visually with flair. Combined with the premonitory atmosphere generated by the fine live sound and music, the children in the audience are set to explode with anticipation.
If the piece is scary (but not, my own squeamish seven-year-old assures me, too scary), it is just as effective where the book’s humour is concerned.
Most of the story is well-plotted in Gaiman’s text, but it is in staging the wolfish celebrations which follow the expulsion of the humans from their home that this piece really comes into its own. The wolf masks and puppets are quite divine, in a fabulously rough sort of way. When the wolves do get the run of the house, they look like a bunch of drunken louts.
Their shenanigans are simply too hilarious, and too ingenious, to divulge to readers who may see the show as it tours; but if I mention the record player, the vacuum cleaner, Dad’s tuba and the dressing up box, you’ll get the idea.
There is also comedy from an unexpected source. In the book, Lucy’s brother is a rather annoying sibling with little by way of personality. Here, however, young Ryan Fletcher is a revelation, making a blisteringly adolescent tube of himself; singing in a fake American accent, playing air guitar and generally looking like a wannabe accountant.
If the show has a weakness it lies in the sheer number of performative ideas which have been squeezed in; a sign, unquestionably, of the collaborative process by which it was made. However, these various elements are, for the most part, tamed and focused … which is more than can be said of those wolves.
--Mark Brown
From the April 2nd Daily Variety:
The Wolves in the Walls
(Tramway, Glasgow; 600 seats; £9 $16 top)
A National Theater of Scotland presentation with Improbable, in association with Tramway, of a musical in one act based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Conceived by Vicky Featherstone, Julian Crouch and Nick Powell. Directed by Featherstone and Crouch. Musical director, Martin Lowe. Choreography, Steven Hoggett.
Dad - Iain Johnstone
Mum - Cora Bissett
Lucy - Frances Thorburn
Brother - Ryan Fletcher
The Wolves - Cait Davis, Ewan Hunter, Jessica Tomchack, Jason Webb
Musicians: Robert Melling, Ric Chandler, Brian Molley
Sets and costumes, Crouch; lighting, Natasha Chivers; original music, Powell. Opened March 22, 2006. Reviewed March 29. Running time: 1 HOUR, 15 MIN.
They call it a "musical pandemonium," which is stretching a point. But if this through-composed adaptation of the children's picture book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, "The Wolves in the Walls," doesn't have quite the anarchic spirit of helmer-designer Julian Crouch's best-known creation, "Shockheaded Peter," it does have a fertile energy of its own. As a junior introduction to the dark side of musical theater, it's a lot of grisly fun and will be welcomed by younger Stateside audiences when it crosses the pond to tour in 2007.
Vicky Featherstone, head of the new National Theater of Scotland, struck on the idea of staging the book while reading it to her eldest son. At only 4, he was captivated by an all-too-believable tale of young Lucy whose protests about the wolves living in the walls of her family's new house go unheard until the beasts decide to move in. When the tables are turned and the family is forced to live at the bottom of the garden, it falls on Lucy to put matters right.
In the short book's 50 pages, McKean and Gaiman -- whose name is associated with forthcoming movies Beowulf, Coraline, Stardust and Books of Magic -- create a creepy, quirky picture that captures something of the anxiety, powerlessness and dark imagination of childhood. All odd angles and spooky shadows, it has a haunting quality that belies the simplicity of the story and repays repeated readings.
The production tunes in well to the blend of humor and horror, setting the genial but self-absorbed family figures -- Iain Johnstone's tuba-playing father, Cora Bissett's jam-making mother and Ryan Fletcher's game-playing big brother (complete with Space Invaders sweater) -- against the scraggy, unkempt wolves, a dangly-limbed pack of sack-cloth puppets, more scary in their lawlessness than their bite. Only the radiant smile of Frances Thorburn's Lucy reassures us that everything will be all right.
As designer, Crouch picks up on the cut-and-paste style and distinctive color palate of McKean's artwork, building a number of ingenious variations on the domestic interior in which dimensions and perspectives are routinely out of kilter. When the girl senses the walls closing in on her, they do just that: three cardboard cut-outs creeping up when her back is turned like wayward components in a toy theater.
There's a lovably homemade quality to all of this (Crouch's specialty as designer is making entire sets from Scotch tape), but that's not to underestimate the production's technical sophistication. Pencil in hand, Thorburn leads us gently into the show by appearing to draw on the lowered curtain in front of her, quickly filling it with huge childish sketches of wolves with the help of some computer wizardry. The arrival of the animals is anticipated by an ominous rumbling that rattles our seats, chilling glimpses of shadow-puppet silhouettes and projections of fearsome lupine eyes.
Nick Powell's score is influenced by everything from madrigals to electronica, heavy rock, Michael Nyman and George Gershwin. Melodically, though, it's short on killer tunes and, lyrically, rather too faithful to the book to create memorable, stand-alone songs. In that sense, it's more operatic in form, prioritizing the telling of the story over show-stopping numbers.
This means there's less musical flamboyance than in "Shockheaded Peter," which was driven by the extraordinary talents of the Tiger Lilies and, in a later version, David Thomas of Pere Ubu. But that's not to diminish the child-friendly qualities of this entertaining show.
--Mark Fisher
From the 31st March Times Online:
Four stars
Well, here it is, the first full mainstage production of Scotland's new National Theatre, and if one of the company's missions is to build the audience of the future, then this brisk, vivid and effective 75-minute "musical pandemonium" for children over the age of six seems to hit the nail squarely on the head. Co-produced with London-based Improbable Theatre, the show is based on the award-winning 2003 picture book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, an eccentric and beautifully drawn collage of images and text which tells the story of Lucy, a wise child who just knows that the rustling noises in the walls of her family's house are caused not by mice but by a marauding company of wolves, and who, alarmingly, is proved right.
This is an unsettling story, in other words, full of echoes of dark 1990s themes of occupation, flight and exile, and the sudden powerlessness of parents in a cruel world. The echo of postmodern warfare is captured by the strange commando gear worn by the four actors who play the wolves, carrying big, awkward wolf-puppets.
The emotional curve of the story is beautifully captured in this joint production by the NTS's Vicky Featherstone and Improbable's Julian Crouch, and by the lovely Frances Thorburn as Lucy, Ryan Fletcher as her PlayStation-obsessed brother, and Cora Bissett and Iain Johnstone as her loving but ineffectual parents.
Where the show slightly misses the mark is in the areas where the National Theatre might be expected to excel. The scenic effects range from the excellent and exciting - such as the moving, translucent walls of the house - to the clumsy and the slightly disappointing. And Nick Powell's lyrical score, although brilliantly sung, propels us deftly through the story without ever becoming memorable. But if the production fails to achieve the world-beating levels of beauty, clarity and technical excellence to which it might have aspired, it's still a bright, strong, clever and interesting big-scale children's show built around a family story that attracted delighted roars and chuckles of recognition from the kids in the audience. And it seems more than capable, as it tours on to London, Perth, Stirling and Ayr, not only of representing Scottish theatre elsewhere, but of drawing many thousands of children and their families into the embrace of their new National Theatre company before its first season is out.
--Joyce McMillan
From the 31st March Times Online:
It was cunning, tactically, to open the all-new National Theatre of Scotland in ten places at once last month, diffusing attention but pulling in thousands more people than would ever have seen one big gala in Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Sooner or later, though, there was always going to come a moment when all eyes would be on one place, one stage, one big moment.
This production is it.
Anyone expecting some grand classic, however, or even a new play by a Liz Lochhead or a David Greig, still has not grasped how different this national-theatre-without-walls — no permanent company, no permanent home — wants to be.
Who else would have taken a story by Neil Gaiman, the graphic novel supremo, and got him to adapt it, a first in itself? Who else would have chosen a show for a family audience ("anyone from six upwards who's not a scaredy-cat", according to the publicity)? Who else would have had it almost entirely sung through to some stylish but dark, original music by Nick Powell?
Well, in the end, as long as it works, who cares? Happily, I can report that, although it takes a while to get going, its action-packed 75 minutes ends in something close to triumph. The story, originally a dream of Gaiman's four-year-old daughter, is that there are wolves living in the walls of her ordinary house. Lucy, charmingly played and sung by Frances Thorburn, is more like 10 or 11 here, though naturalistic details do not count for much in this fantastical world where Mum makes jam and Dad plays the tuba. Naturally, Lucy turns out to be right. But when they finally appear, everything does not come to a stop, as the adults predict. The wolves turn out to be scaredy-cats themselves, just a bit raucous and badly behaved.
You could find any number of subtexts -about vanquishing fears, embracing strangers, living cheek by jowl -if you wanted to. But the real pleasure here is the sheer theatrical fun of it, the moveable, transparent walls of the house, the crazy projections and perspectives and, above all, the wolves themselves. Grey, mangy tatterdemalions they may be, giant puppets brilliantly manipulated by onstage puppeteers, yet somehow there remains something inescapably lupine about them.
Julian Crouch co-directs alongside Vicky Featherstone, the theatre's artistic director, and you can see the hallmarks of Crouch's own Improbable company, with which this is co-produced, all over it. But then Crouch grew up in Ayr, so already the NTS is bringing its talent home. My eight-year-old assistant reviewer was enraptured.
--Robert Dawson Scott
From the 31st March Scotsman:
Well, here it is, the first full mainstage production of Scotland's new National Theatre, and if one of the company's missions is to build the audience of the future, then this brisk, vivid and effective 75-minute "musical pandemonium" for children over the age of six seems to hit the nail squarely on the head. Co-produced with London-based Improbable Theatre, the show is based on the award-winning 2003 picture book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, an eccentric and beautifully drawn collage of images and text which tells the story of Lucy, a wise child who just knows that the rustling noises in the walls of her family's house are caused not by mice but by a marauding company of wolves, and who, alarmingly, is proved right.
This is an unsettling story, in other words, full of echoes of dark 1990s themes of occupation, flight and exile, and the sudden powerlessness of parents in a cruel world. The echo of postmodern warfare is captured by the strange commando gear worn by the four actors who play the wolves, carrying big, awkward wolf-puppets.
The emotional curve of the story is beautifully captured in this joint production by the NTS's Vicky Featherstone and Improbable's Julian Crouch, and by the lovely Frances Thorburn as Lucy, Ryan Fletcher as her PlayStation-obsessed brother, and Cora Bissett and Iain Johnstone as her loving but ineffectual parents.
Where the show slightly misses the mark is in the areas where the National Theatre might be expected to excel. The scenic effects range from the excellent and exciting - such as the moving, translucent walls of the house - to the clumsy and the slightly disappointing. And Nick Powell's lyrical score, although brilliantly sung, propels us deftly through the story without ever becoming memorable. But if the production fails to achieve the world-beating levels of beauty, clarity and technical excellence to which it might have aspired, it's still a bright, strong, clever and interesting big-scale children's show built around a family story that attracted delighted roars and chuckles of recognition from the kids in the audience. And it seems more than capable, as it tours on to London, Perth, Stirling and Ayr, not only of representing Scottish theatre elsewhere, but of drawing many thousands of children and their families into the embrace of their new National Theatre company before its first season is out.
--Joyce McMillan
From the 31st March Guardian:
Lucy's house looks like an ordinary house. But Lucy knows that there is something different and strange about it: a feeling that anything could happen. Her busy jam-making mum, tuba-playing dad and big brother are dismissive of her fears, but Lucy is certain there are wolves living in the walls. And the wolves are about to come out. And as everyone knows, when the wolves come out of the wall, it's all over.
Based on Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's cult picture book, this co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Improbable Theatre takes the form of a family opera that is acutely alert to the psychology of the child's mind. This is no Shockheaded Peter: it is intended for children, but it transports the adult back into the world of childhood, a world full of uncertainty, nameless fears and mystery, a place where bogeymen and monsters lurk under your bed and in your head.
Like the book, the show is very scary and very safe at the same time, and it completely understands the child's fierce attachment to her home and the intense loneliness of modern family life where families live together and yet are apart doing their own thing. It could do with racking up the tension at the beginning, however. And, melodic though Nick Powell's score is, it is rather too well-behaved for this pandemonium, with its wonderful raggedy wolves - all long limbs, jaws and twisted smiles, so that they look endearingly terrifying, like Bambi with fangs.
Quintessentially of the book, and yet also much more, this is a delightful, anarchically inventive exploration of the peculiar pleasures of fear, and it both conjures monsters and defeats them. Wolves and humans do a terrific job. I made sure to check under my bed before I turned the light out.
--Lyn Gardner
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Posted Wednesday, March 22, 2006 by lucy_anne at 6:49 PM PST
Wolves in the Walls (Theater) - Feature From the 19th March Times Online: Pity the wolf. Was ever a creature so maligned? The last British wolf was killed in the Scottish Highlands by MacQueen, stalker to the Laird of Mackintosh, after it had savaged two children. That was in 1743. Yet, more than 250 years later, children still fear the slavering jaws of what is essentially an overgrown dog.
Literature has a lot to answer for, whether it’s Angela Carter’s fairy tales or Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, in which errant children are threatened with becoming “wolf porridge”. Neither story, though, quite matches The Wolves in the Walls for terror. In Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s picture book, the young heroine, Lucy, believes she can hear lupine rustlings behind the walls of her home. Seeking reassurance, she approaches her parents. “I’m sure it’s not wolves,” says her mother, “for you know what they say... If the wolves come out of the walls, it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?” asks Lucy.
“It,” replies her mother. “Everybody knows that.” Probably best not to read this as a bedtime story.
This strange tale may seem a strange choice for the first big show from the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS). When the National Theatre in London opened at the Old Vic in 1963, the first production was Hamlet, directed by Peter Hall and starring Peter O’Toole. Surely the Scots could have rustled up Brian Cox in Macbeth? It was never going to be that way. Unlike the National Theatre in London, the NTS has no contracted actors (save for a tiny education team), working instead through co-productions with Scotland’s existing theatre companies. Nor does it have a permanent home, and when you consider the millstone bricks and mortar have been to artistic directors elsewhere, that’s probably a blessing. It leaves more energy and more of the £4.5m annual budget to devote to the work.
One downside is that, without a building, you are asking the public to engage with an abstraction: would the National Theatre in London have cemented its position if it wasn’t anchored on the South Bank?
Potential pitfalls for the NTS were evident at its official launch in February. The opening event, Home, featured 10 productions around Scotland. In Shetland, fiddlers played on a ferry, while Edinburgh offered a children’s-eye view of First Minister’s Questions, starring Daniella Nardini and Tam Dean Burn. Glasgow’s show had abseiling cameramen filming a drama taking place inside an Easterhouse tower block, which was projected onto a screen outside; Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd starred. The message was unmistakable: here was a theatre for the whole country. It was hard, though, to escape the impression that, in some cases, artistic excellence had been sacrificed to the demands of accessibility.
The NTS’s unflappable artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, argues, with some justification, that 10,000 people saw the shows, far more than could have attended any red-carpet premiere. But the impression was of a missed opportunity to make a habitually patriotic Scottish public aware they had a new national institution of which to be proud. Publicity-wise, it didn’t help that the opening night was on the same Saturday Scotland beat England at rugby. Guess what got the front-page pictures on the Sunday.
Still, in a strong first season, there is new work from David Harrower, an overdue revival of Chris Hannan’s Elizabeth Gordon Quinn and a stage version of John Byrne’s Tutti Frutti. The Wolves in the Walls should add a little bite, too.
Featherstone (who previously ran Paines Plough) came across the book by chance. “I was in rehearsal with no childcare. I had to find something for my children. There it was in a bookshop.” The mask-maker Julian Crouch agreed to co-direct an adaptation. As one of the presiding spirits of Improbable Theatre, Crouch had a track record of helping gothic children’s stories to the stage. The team’s Shockheaded Peter — a “junk musical” based on Heinrich Hoffmann’s cautionary tales — has gone from West Yorkshire Playhouse via the West End to New York.
Why the interest in the macabre? “I have a short attention span,” says Crouch, in a break from rehearsals in Glasgow. “So wolves, or children having their thumbs cut off, hold my interest.”
With two weeks of rehearsals to go, the show is coming together: the four-person band is here for the first time, playing the haunting score by Nick Powell; and Featherstone is marshalling her cast of eight.
But the stars are the wolves. If there were an annual prize for puppet- making, Crouch would have it sewn up. Raised in Ayr, he won a collage competition at 14. He won a camera — but he was more excited by a tub of Copydex that came with it. His burlap-and-latex creations — with ping-pong-ball eyes and glue-stick teeth — leer from the rehearsal room’s corners. Big wolves with dangly legs work as body extensions. Smaller masks go on the actors’ heads. There is even one made from a litter-picker tied to elastic. Tap it and it lunges forward.
The effect is funny, but also haunting, exactly the tone The Wolves in the Walls strives for. “In a way, it’s quite serious,” Featherstone says. “All the best children’s stories are. Lucy’s family all have obsessions. Her father plays the tuba, her mother makes jam and her brother has video games. She’s got nothing, and wants them to focus on her, so she creates the wolves.”
Crouch cuts in: “There are a lot of interpretations. To me, there’s a global aspect to it. It’s like panics about immigration. The awful, unknown thing becomes normal very quickly. When the wolves come out of the wall, it’s not all over. It is more exciting.”
After centuries of abuse, the wolf may relish a little good press. At least, for once, nobody will complain if they huff, puff and bring the house down.
--Adrian Turpin
Interview - Julia Crouch - The Guardian From the 29th March Guardian: 'I am very much from the Cliff Richard Summer Holiday school of theatre design and direction," says Julian Crouch with a grin. "I feel happiest and most comfortable when I'm in a big space with lots of other really creative people and we're all doing it together. My idea of the perfect working situation would be to find myself in a room and for someone to say, 'Hey, let's put on a show.' And we'd just do it. I'd be in my element."
The first time I saw Julian Crouch on stage, in Improbable's improvised object animation show Animo, he conjured a swan out of nothing but newspaper. Then he created a newspaper bridge for it to swim under, and added a couple of ducks for good measure. It was all over in the blink of an eye and it was like watching a magician at work. Afterwards, you couldn't quite believe you had really seen what you thought you had.
Vicky Featherstone, the artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, is currently co-directing with Crouch a staged version of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's cult picture book, The Wolves in the Walls. She says she recognises that feeling: "When you talk about an idea with Julian, he has an immediate understanding of how that can translate physically on to the stage. One afternoon after he'd finished making the wolves he sat one of the actresses down on a sofa with a wolf and began directing them. The wolf just came alive before your eyes. It was so exhilarating."
Not for nothing did Crouch begin his career with a company called Trickster - he is a master at making people rub their eyes in the theatre. Now 43, he has worked on some of the biggest hits of the past decade, including Shockheaded Peter, the worldwide success for which he created a Penny Dreadful Victorian theatre full of trap doors and secret exits and entrances, and Jerry Springer - the Opera, on which he was designer and associate director. He is also one of the artistic triumvirate that makes up Improbable Theatre, a company of infinite variety and invention whose work runs the gamut from improvisation-based shows such as Animo and Lifegame, to the jokey splatterfest Theatre of Blood, recently at the National Theatre.
Crouch is part of a growing band of theatre practitioners who refuse to be pigeonholed as either designers or directors, but want to do it all. So much so, in his case, that Crouch also writes, devises, improvises and performs, is a puppeteer and puppet-maker and can even turn his hand to pyrotechnics, as in his outdoor spectacular Sticky. That show also involved the nightly construction of a 100ft tower out of Sellotape: it sprang up in less than an hour and disappeared in minutes, existing only as a strange, beautiful, teasing memory.
Even Crouch says: "I really don't know quite what I am. I definitely don't feel like a real theatre designer, even though that is how I am often described. And I know that I'm not a director on my own. I'm a co-director - I thrive on collaboration. I quite like not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing." He admits, though, that there was a time 20 years ago, when he first came to London after spending several seasons working with Welfare State International, when he would have been very happy to be accepted as a theatre designer.
"I'm entirely self-taught; I never had any formal training. Working at Welfare State was my education. But neither agents nor Equity would take me seriously. They didn't think that making giant wobbly puppets in muddy fields in the middle of nowhere qualified me to be a theatre designer. It was hard to get work and a struggle to be accepted. Until I did Shockheaded Peter I felt completely invisible."
Brought up in Scotland, where his father was a drama lecturer, Crouch was an arty child who won a collage competition in his early teens when he cut up his old school uniform and turned it into a playground scene. Part of the prize included a large supply of Copydex. Crouch became fascinated with the stuff - in a way that had nothing to do with teenage glue-sniffing and everything to do with its possibilities as an artistic medium. Soon he had been roped into making masks for his father's productions, sparking an obsession with mask and puppet-making that continues to this day.
Rather than go to art school or design college, Crouch went on to study the history of art at Edinburgh university. He has no regrets about this - something that was reinforced recently when he helped to judge the prestigious Linbury award for design. "I found it interesting to measure myself up against those people who had done it the proper way. The people who won the award were fantastic. But a lot of the work I saw was uninspired and by people who had been taught in classes that were too big, and forced on to courses that didn't really interest them. It made me glad I'd never been through that."
Having struggled to be accepted as a designer, Crouch is now struggling to leave the tag - at least in its more traditional connotations - behind. "It's transformation that really interests me," he says. "I'm not that interested in the look of things, which is probably quite a heretical thing to say. What interests me is how things change and transform. It is probably why I wouldn't be the designer of choice for a one-set show. I like designs that you see and then they are gone. To me it feels more like music - you hear a piece you like, and you might be able to whistle a snatch of it, but you can't quite capture it until you hear it again. I want my designs to be like that."
For the past couple of months Crouch has been working on what sounds like his dream job: the adaptation of The Wolves in the Wall, which he is creating alongside Featherstone, choreographer Steven Hoggett from Frantic Assembly and composer Nick Powell. Together with the cast, they're turning Gaiman and McKean's scary children's book into a "musical pandemonium" for all the family.
"It's been like a huge open workshop. I've been making the wolves in one corner. Nick has been in another making music. It's been slightly crazy and very satisfying. There is something messy about the process, just as there is about Neil and Dave's book. We are very badly behaved and chaotic - just like the wolves."
The Wolves in the Walls tells the story of Lucy, who hears noises in the walls of her house and is convinced that wolves are making the sounds. The rest of her family don't believe her, saying it must be bats or rats, because when the wolves come out of the walls "it is all over". But Lucy is proved right and when the wolves do tumble out of the walls, the family abandon their home until the resourceful Lucy finds a way to win it back.
"The story," suggests Crouch, "is a metaphor for whatever you want it to be. It could be about a mum and dad who are splitting up and whose daughter overhears their conversation; it could be a refugee story about demonising incomers. It is very open. I like things that have gaps and that allow room for the audience to put themselves in it. It is the gaps between bits of dialogue or things happening on stage that are often the most interesting in theatre."
Gaiman says that as soon as he and McKean - whose startlingly original movie MirrorMask has just been released in this country - met Crouch, they knew that their book was in safe hands. "Dave and Julian were practically long-lost twins who admired each other's work," recalls Gaiman. "Long-lost twins," repeats Crouch slowly when I tell him this. "Yes, there are many similarities in our work." Then he adds dryly: "But I believe Dave McKean is far more wealthy than me."
Crouch agrees that working with someone else's visual material has been slightly strange, but that "bit by bit I've wrestled it into my own territory". A crucial change is that in the book the house is a gothic, Addams Family-style construction, but, having lived in Scotland between the ages of two and 23, Crouch was keen to give it a Scottish setting. "It is made from a remembered architecture, the suburban Scottish housing estates of my youth. I constantly dream about the houses in which I have lived, and this was a chance to make use of those dreams. One of the things I've done is to create lots of walls and staircases, and in this case the actors don't move about the scenery, it moves around them."
The most important thing is how Crouch decided to realise the wolves, who in the book are naughty, funny and immensely scary all at the same time. It's no surprise to discover that he hasn't opted for the obvious. "One of the things I always find useful," says Crouch, "is to limit my palette and try to find a way to stylistically tie a show together. I like the idea of an obsession in a show, whether it is books or baskets or some other material. Sticky, 70 Hill Lane and A Midsummer Night's Dream were my Sellotape shows. Shockheaded Peter was my muslin show, and The Wolves in the Walls is my hessian show. The wolves are made from sacking - which is rather appropriate because of Scotland's long tradition of mining and jute sacks." He shakes his head, adding: "I expect some people will be disappointed, but right from the beginning I knew that there was definitely wasn't going to be any fur"
--Lyn Gardner
Stardust (Film) News From the 28th March Aberdeen Press and Journal: Some of the world's biggest stars will swap Hollywood for the Highlands when filming of a big-budget movie begins next month.
Among those signed up to appear in the fantasy Stardust are Robert De Niro, Claudia Schiffer and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Sienna Miller, Charlie Cox and Claire Danes will also star.
Schiffer's husband, Matthew Vaughn, will direct the movie, which has been adapted from the novel by Neil Gaiman.
It has been reported that Vaughn, who was best man at Guy Ritchie's wedding to Madonna at Skibo Castle in 2000, has already made preparatory visits to the Highlands and Islands.
Filming at locations such as Skye and Inverness is expected to begin next month and the movie will be released in cinemas next year.
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Highland and Islands Film Commission confirmed that the film's producers were interested in using a number of Highland locations.
She said: "We are hoping that it is going to go ahead but everything is up in the air. We are competing with other locations."
Stardust follows the quest of a young man called Tristran to win the affections of a girl, Victoria, by finding a falling star.
But during his journey he comes face to face with a witch, played by Pfeiffer, and the pirate Captain Shakespeare, played by De Niro.
Vaughn co-wrote the script with Jane Goldman, wife of TV and radio presenter Jonathan Ross.
As a director Vaughn has released just one film, Layer Cake, in 2004, but his producing credits include two Guy Ritchie films - Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch.
In a recent statement, Vaughn said: "I am delighted to be able to work with such a stellar cast in bringing the magic of Stardust to the screen. I look forward to once again shooting in the UK."
Willie Cameron, of Loch Ness Marketing, a location and film facilities company, said there was no reason why big films could not be made in the Highlands.
"I know that in the last Budget the chancellor was giving incentives for companies coming into the Highlands. But it is too late. That should have been done after Local Hero in 1983."
He added: "There is no good reason why this can't be done in the Highlands. We have some of the best locations in Europe."
--Jane Candlish
Wolves in the Walls (Theater) - Previews From the 25th March Guardian: The Wolves In The Walls
Glasgow If you loved Shockheaded Peter, then you are in for a treat. Designer/director Julian Crouch, who worked on that show and is one of the regulars who make up Improbable Theatre, has joined forces with Vicky Featherstone, the artistic director of the National Theatre Of Scotland, to create what is a described as "musical pandemonium". Based on Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's cult children's picture book, it tells the story of Lucy, who is convinced there are wolves living in the walls. Of course nobody believes her - until the wolves come out of the walls and take over the house. It looks like it's all over for Lucy and her family, but Lucy has a trick up her sleeve. The book is mad, scary and deliciously funny and the show, that uses both puppets and actors, should be too.
--Lyn Gardner
From the Evening Times Online: The Wolves In The Walls, the first stage show from the National Theatre of Scotland, is having its world premiere at the Tramway on Saturday.
The musical show, in co-production with Improbable, is designed to appeal to everyone over the age of seven.
Devised from Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's eponymous graphic children's book, Wolves tells the story of little Lucy.
Lucy is restless. Her hands are laced behind her back and she has the look of a child who is looking for trouble.
Meanwhile, Lucy's mother is making jam, her brother playing computer games, and her father out at work (playing his tuba).
But then we realise that Lucy can hear noises in the walls.
And we see Lucy, her face and ear pressed flat to the wall, nervous but excited.
Nobody believes her though. Her mum thinks it's mice. Her dad thinks it's rats. Her brother thinks it might be bats.
It can't be wolves, they say. Because you know the old saying - when the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over.
There is a direct moral simplicity to the tale which has also been described as savagely modern.
We get to see the wolves emerging from the wall, the wolf party, thanks to clever puppetry.
A spokesman said: "National Theatre of Scotland artistic director Vicky Featherstone, Improbable's Julian Crouch and composer Nick Powell collaborate with a cast of puppets and actors, musicians and scenery to create an intensely visual, raucous and scratchy, joyous and scary expose of how anarchic wolves really are."
The Wolves In The Walls features Cora Bissett, Iain Johnstone, Frances Thorburn (photo), and Ryan Fletcher.
March 25-April 4 (previews March 25-28), Tramway, Albert Drive, 7.30pm, matinees vary, £9/£6 conc, previews £7/£4 conc. 0845 330 3501.
--Brian Beacom
Feature - Times (UK) From the 25th March Times Online: The new National Theatre of Scotland has no official home. So it doesn’t have doors. But if it did, it might be expected to be opening them with a play by one of any number of young Scottish playwrights. Or at least something with a Scottish theme. Macbeth, perhaps. Mary Stuart might have suited (which David Harrower is indeed adapting for a future production). But what you would never have expected it to announce itself with is The Wolves in the Walls, a musical adapted from a children’s book written by someone who, despite copious credits in an array of literary genres, has actually never written a play or indeed song lyrics. And who happens to be English. And lives in Minnesota.
Neil Gaiman is, in the words of Forbes magazine, "the most famous author you’ve never heard of". His 25-year career has always been of a decidedly strange hue, taking in comics, graphic novels and children’s fiction — many of them produced in collaboration with the graphic artist Dave McKean — plus fantasy fiction for adults and screenplays (MirrorMask, which has just been released, and Robert Zemeckis’s long-awaited Beowulf). There is even an unauthorised biography of Duran Duran with Gaiman’s name on it. Supplying the source material for the new National Theatre of Scotland is only the latest feint from a writer more or less impossible to pin down.
The Wolves in the Walls is a book for children that does exactly what it says on the cover. It tells of a child who imagines a pack of wolves within the walls of her home. It takes an unusually febrile imagination to come up with such a bizarre idea, except that this story was not his own.
"It began with my daughter," he says, "who is now 11 and was then 4, having a nightmare. I went upstairs and heard her crying and she said: 'Wolves came out of the wall. They took over the house. It was real. I can show you the place in the wallpaper they came out from.' She spent a couple of days rather worried about this. I would tell her little stories about wolves just to try to stop her worrying. I started thinking, it’s a proper story. It took me about three goes to get it right, mostly because I knew what would make it would be the tone of voice rather than the story itself."
So the National Theatre of Scotland’s inaugural production was literally dreamt up by a four-year-old. The company could not announce any more boldly that it means to provide challenging theatre for everyone. "The idea was that it would always be a children’s opera," says Gaiman, "but we decided that the word was incredibly intimidating. It sounds like something you are going to have to endure rather than enjoy, so I decided to call it ‘a musical pandemonium’ instead." This makes sense. Gaiman has spent an entire career scaring the bejesus out of his audience, but using the "O" word might have scared them off altogether.
The Wolves in the Walls is a co-production with Improbable Theatre, whose best known show is the award-winning ghoulish family entertainment, Shockheaded Peter. It is Improbable’s Julian Crouch, who also designed the family unfriendly Jerry Springer: The Opera, who will supply the silhouettes of wolves stalking the luminous walls. Nick Powell provides the songs, and the show is directed by Vicky Featherstone, the NTS’s artistic director.
As for Gaiman, apart from turning his hand to writing lyrics wherever the show requires them, his has been what he calls "a lurching in-and-out involvement: 50 per cent approving observer | | |
