The Witches Reviews – National Theatre

"A dazzling show that’s even wittier than Dahl"

"So, now, Matilda has some serious competition. That’s putting it mildly. If the RSC’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl tale became a cash cow, the National’s musical about harpies intent on turning children into mice deserves to become an even bigger hit."

"The songs are glorious, Lizzie Clachan’s sets are sumptuous and the scattering of in-jokes beautifully handled"

"... Daniel Rigby — star of recent revival of Accidental Death of an Anarchist — steals scene after scene as the Fawlty-style manager of the Bournemouth hotel where the witches gather for their secret conference."

"If I’m being ultra-critical, I’d add that the mechanised mice were a tad slow. But don’t be put off: this is a stunning achievement. As well as some terrific songs, here’s a show that doesn’t try to gloss over the issue of mortality. It stares death in the face, and laughs."

"The National Theatre’s vivid, irreverent Roald Dahl adaptation is a hysterically funny triumph"

"Sure, it’s notionally aimed at families. But the National Theatre’s Roald Dahl adaptation ‘The Witches’ really is for everyone, (everyone over eight anyway). Because it’s quite easily the funniest new musical London has seen since at least ‘The Book of Mormon’."

"It sees writer Lucy Kirkwood and director Lyndsey Turner - two heavyweight Brit talents who’ve never been involved with a musical before – join forces with cult US composer Dave Malloy to create something that’s singularly fun, further elevated by an absurdly good, galacticos-grade cast."

"... any scares are largely overridden by how spectacularly fun it is"

"There they’re greeted by uppity hotelier Mr Stringer, played by the great Daniel Rigby – surely British theatre’s greatest comic actor – as a cross between Basil Fawlty and a gazelle, bounding weightlessly about the stage as he bullies his poor guests and fawns over his rich ones. And I can’t miss out Katherine Kingsley, phenomenal as the self-regarding, ludicrously Nordic-accented Grand High Witch who wearily taps at her phone while occasionally immolating her dimwit minions."

"... the NT has thrown absolutely everything it has at ‘The Witches’, and the results are pure magic."

"A mischievous musical take on Roald Dahl"

"Like many fairy tales it deals with deep fears — death, abandonment, betrayal. And in this terrific new musical, directed by Lyndsey Turner, it’s an absolute cracker of a show."

"Lucy Kirkwood’s excellent script and lyrics bristle with wit, shaking up Dahl’s trademark mix of the mischievous and the macabre. It’s genuinely scary in places, with allusions to fascism: these witches dream of cleansing the country."

"It’s also very funny and packed with peachy parts"
"Bertie Caplan brings a sweet sincerity to Luke that, together with Triplett’s gruff love, holds the show together, even during occasional narrative dips. Altogether bewitching."

"This essential Roald Dahl musical warms your heart and chills your bones all at once"

"The National Theatre’s sparkling adaptation of Dahl’s story about a group of child-hating witches has the sardonic humour of ‘Matilda’ and ‘Paddington 2’ and is as electrifying as a failed bid to untangle your broken fairy lights"

"... this brilliant take on Roald Dahl’s bestseller, one that’s uncompromisingly creepy, weird, witty – and smart enough to scrub away the misogynistic, anti-semitic undertones of Dahl’s story while letting its dark heart beat stronger than ever."

"This is a family show, yes, but in the same way that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a Disney film for kids: all good, chilling, brain-stretching fun, as long as you’re willing to pick up the therapy bills in a few decades’ time. Still, its darker themes are set in a joyfully whimsical frame."

"Malloy’s songs draw from such an eclectic musical palette – pop, Christian plainsong, 1940s showtune razzmatazz and African-inspired drumming – that each feels like a highlight in its own way."

"It’s a rare musical that can warm your heart and chill you to the bone all at once – and that makes The Witches essential viewing for all but the most sensitive kids. It’s a festive nightmare, electrifying as a failed bid to untangle your broken fairy lights, and just as sparkling."

"Dahl’s witches cast a spell over me (and I’m not even a fan of the books!)"

"I’m not that much of a fan of Dahl’s often surreptitiously sour children’s yarns. But that didn’t stop me loving Lucy Kirkwood’s brazen adaptation, and Lyndsey Turner’s riotous song and dance staging of the book. And my exacting 13-year-old daughter shared my enthusiasm."

"It’s funny, too — thanks to some unusually doughty kids led by Bertie Caplan as Luke (on press night).Written with the brakes off, in a blizzard of barbed gags (aimed at adults and children), Kirkwood’s script has an embarrassment of riches. But running at nigh-on three hours, it could use a trim."

"Dave Malloy’s songs and score are on a delirious sugar rush of their own, ransacking a sweetshop of musical parody on Lizzie Clachan’s lurid pink and yellow set."

"The pace slackens after the interval. But that allows Kingsley to draw breath for a cabaret-style solo, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, in which she dreams of world domination while channelling Margaret Thatcher, Norma Desmond and Marlene Dietrich — and singing with a bizarre Norwegian accent best described as Scandi-noir."

"The super-inventive songs, by the adapter Lucy Kirkwood and the composer Dave Malloy, go on a bit. The whole super-inventive show, at two and three quarter hours, goes on a bit. Heavens, though, what joy it contains within."

"Lyndsey Turner’s production is a lavish, characterful family show that artfully blends the surprising and the familiar. It takes on its challengingly capacious room and absolutely rules it. Expect it to have a life beyond the South Bank."

"This is the Christmas show to beat"

"Forget the old adage 'never work with children or animals', this production has great fun with children *as* animals"

"This is the Christmas show to beat – a deliciously spiky supernatural tale that honours the dark streak in Roald Dahl’s child-pleasing writing. It has a witty script from Lucy Kirkwood, jauntily rousing songs from Dave Malloy, and three fine adult comic performances that were nonetheless outdone by the astonishingly confident younger leads (Bertie Caplan and Cian Eagle-Service) on opening night."

"Their Garbo-accented head honcho (Katherine Kingsley, glacially funny but missing some top notes and a killer edge) has devised a potion that will turn all kids into mice that can be easily eradicated."

"There are occasional lacunae here but this is a polished, witty, crisply sardonic serving of Dahl. And if the other child actors sharing the central roles are as good as the ones I saw, they deserve all the plaudits."

"A magical musical concoction at the National Theatre"

"The National Theatre has taken Dahl’s strange and not unproblematic tale and turned it into a smorgasbord – I use the Scandinavian reference advisedly – of comic and musical delights, in a production by Lyndsey Turner that may have been years in the making but proves well worth the wait."

"Book writer Lucy Kirkwood and composer Dave Malloy (they collaborated on lyrics) could be accused of dulling some of the darkness of Dahl, with a couple of songs feeling overly sentimental... But most of the numbers are richly inventive and very, very funny"

"The real showstopper however comes from a surprising source; the gift of a role that is Bruno (Cian Eagle-Service, George Menezes Cutts and William Skinner), transformed from the book’s sweet-guzzling Augustus Gloop-type into a triple-threat charmer"

"No Matilda – but still a dazzling Dahl musical"

"With some judicious tweaking and pruning, a glorious future surely awaits the show"

"As with Matilda, an enormous amount rests on the shoulders of very young performers and, on opening night, pre-teens Bertie Caplan and Cian Eagle-Service were phenomenal in the leading roles of honest Luke and precocious Bruno. The latter held the mighty Olivier auditorium utterly enrapt with a dazzling top hat and tails number, emitting a suavity and confidence that professional performers three times his age would envy."

"Lucy Kirkwood’s book is lively and enjoyable, although key plot points – the original encounter between Gran and the Grand High Witch, for example – remain frustratingly under-explained in Lyndsey Turner’s production."

"Kingsley has a ball playing a Dietrich-esque diva of a baddie... Triplett is convincing as idiosyncratic Gran, gruff but warm in equal measure, and Daniel Rigby is the frantic hotel manager"

"Dahl's wicked witches banish whiff of Disney"

"... the good news is that this musical adaptation is true to Dahl’s anarchic, grobblesquirting spirit. Lucy Kirkwood’s witty, chortle-inducing adaptation (she co-wrote the lyrics too) gets the joy of the piece and adds an imaginary aroma of dog poo (which is how children smell to witches) as a sinister coven plans to convert the world’s children into mice that they can then exterminate."

"Dave Malloy’s score is best when it’s at its max. Expect a tap-dance number (choreographed by Stephen Mear) that competes with this summer’s Crazy For You."

"The down side is an occasionally Disney-ish feel, with children dressed as clocks, vases and even a Henry hoover. But the greater upside is the evening’s Dahl-ishly sardonic spirit and its generous quotient of laughs."

"A potent potion"

"Dark new musical based on the Roald Dahl novel is a heady, mischievous brew that leaves you grinning"

"Adapted by playwright Lucy Kirkwood and directed by Lyndsey Turner, the show is a potent potion: treacly dark and lip-lickingly delicious, pleasingly subversive, giddy with wit and invention – and, occasionally, just a little hard to swallow"

"While the first act flies, though, the narrative threads become snarled in the second; it would benefit from a sharp pair of scissors. Yet there’s so much else here that is quick-witted, nastily hilarious, heart-in-mouth thrilling or – with an impishness that sneaks up on you when you least expect it – piquantly moving that even when the brew is a little lumpy, you gratefully gulp it down."

"For all its naughty fun, the show is still brave enough to stick with Dahl’s very compromised sort-of happy ending... It may need a final pinch or two of magic, but this wickedly entertaining show will surely put a mischievous grin on anyone’s face."

"Frights played for fun in rollicking musical"

"Roald Dahl’s villains are given a makeover with a gag-filled script by Lucy Kirkwood and a couple of storming numbers"

"In Roald Dahl’s universe, witches are the most dangerous of all the living creatures on Earth... In the world of this musical adaptation, they look as if they have stepped out of Stepford in their pastel twin-sets and gloves: a middle-aged, British equivalent of Mean Girls."

"There is fun, wit and imagination in Lyndsey Turner’s production. If this story is Dahl’s barely disguised diatribe against enforced female conformity, all the better."

"Lucy Kirkwood brings the magic through a script stuffed with effervescent one-liners. Dave Malloy’s songs (with lyrics by Malloy and Kirkwood) sound as if they are still in development, sometimes oddly tuneless and accompanied by thin piano notes or a stomping orchestra."

"The performances are strong nonetheless."

"Roald Dahl's classic is given a magical - if sanitised - makeover"

"The National Theatre's big Christmas production is charmingly exuberant - but oddly light on drama"

"Despite the care and ingenuity that Kirkwood and team (American composer Dave Malloy, director Lyndsey Turner, and choreographer Stephen Mear) lavish on Dahl’s mock cautionary tale about the danger of trusting kind, conformist-seeming women, there’s no getting round the fact that the boy’s psychological progress is slight. So the stereotyping of adult female duplicity inevitably dominates."

"Still, I risk over-quibbling about a show that, for sheer exuberance and coherence, has the edge on the RSC’s festive offering (The Box of Delights). There are songs, scenes and performances that please – a lovely note of comic darkness ushered in by Daniel Rigby’s maniacal hotelier Mr Stringer, much eccentric lovability from Sally Ann Triplett as Gran, and Katherine Kingsley as the glowering Grand High Witch gets a sharp-tongued solo about the joy of jettisoning child-care."

"The youngsters steal the show in the National’s terrifying gothic Disney Roald Dahl"

"Lyndsey Turner’s no-expense-spared, no-talent-skipped evil jamboree of a production, with animated book by Lucy Kirkwood and catchy music by Dave Malloy, is unafraid of the dark. I am not sure what the minimum audience age for the show is but I found it terrifying, though for those happy to wallow in the black molasses of fantastical cruelty, these will be witching hours to savour."

"Katherine Kingsley is fearsome as the shrieking head witch with a dash of Marlene Dietrich about her: a femme fatale who actually plans to kill you. Sally Ann Triplett gives an eccentrically nuanced performance as the grandmother"

"But the show-stealers are the children. Bruno, a greedy, posh little prig (a classic Dahl creation), was, on press night, pricelessly played by Cian Eagle-Service, who, like an infant Fred Astaire, brought the house down, adding in a hilariously world-weary smirk, as if disowning what he was doing."

"As the manager, Mr Stringer, Daniel Rigby is blissfully funny – his mounting stress wittily choreographed"

"In ‘The Witches’ Musical, the Playful and the Macabre"

"A new stage adaptation in London does justice to the dark, comic sensibility of Roald Dahl’s beloved book."

"A charming and spirited musical adaptation of Dahl’s much-loved book — written by Lucy Kirkwood and directed by Lyndsey Turner — opened this month at the National Theater, in London, running through Jan. 27, 2024. It’s a deftly rendered production, a high-quality piece of family entertainment that skilfully blends the playful and the macabre, and does justice to the author’s distinct comic style."

"Caplan delivers an outstanding performance as the young hero, as does Cian Eagle-Service in the role of his spoiled and supercilious pal, Bruno. And Triplett is winningly whimsical as the grouchy-but-kind oddball octogenarian"

"Katherine Kingsley plays the Grand High Witch with a suitably maximalist, cartoon-villain energy. She’s a haughty and imperious figure"

"The songs, by Dave Malloy, are fairly standard musical fare — retro, cabaret-style crowd-pleasers — but the lyrics are well worked and on point."