Roald Dahl's The Witches - NT Olivier

I saw this last night and had an enjoyable time. Yes it is not the best musical ever it is still a good night out. I really enjoyed the staging and design along with the impressively array of costumes. I would say I was never bored however I did feel a lot of the songs could have been trimmed by a verse or two as you got what they were on about in the first few verses. Also I don’t understand the criticism of songs not being memorable. I wonder how many shows we consider ‘classics’ had audiences not remembering the songs as soon as they walked out.

Personally I am never really a fan of child actors and I found in this show they were the sort of child actors I really do not like. Yes they could perform well but I was really on the Witches side. Overall a well made and fun show.

It's hard to understand how this production turned in to such a gigantic charmless mess.

I felt it completely lacked any heart, warmth or soul, part of which was down to both the banging tuneless score and the cack-handed interpretation of the book.

I loved the black and white Tim Burton/Edward Gorey style school room dumbshow, but then that style disappeared completely and we were back to the slightly nauseating purple and pink palette pretty much for the rest of the show,

It seemed like the entire cast bar Sally Anne Triplett had been directed to shout their way through the show. There was no sense of light or shade whatsoever.

How on earth do they end up with mice you could buy in our local toyshop (along with ears and tails), given the animals play quite an important part in the show? A few of them got stuck in the revolve which provided a bit of light relief amidst the chaotic nature of the show. The clock & vase style costumes looked like something out of a school production and rendered the children unable to move, which for your 'signature tune' number is a bit of a mistake. And then a ton must have been spent on scenery like the revolving kitchen set. Did they just run out of money I wonder?

I didn't understand why Katharine Kingsley had the middle-European accent. The "children are arseholes" line was back in her song and I felt like some of the audience checked out at that point. The scene where KK is standing over Luke violently convulsing on a table, just looked unpleasant and extremely strange (not in a good way).

I reckon they could have cut ten of the witches and given a smaller cohort to give the actors a shred of distinguishing characteristics. At least then they wouldn't have all been completely interchangeable. Same with the kids. Less didn't add up to more in this production.

Given the narrative was all over the places it may also have benefitted from being shaved down from the nearly three hour duration of the production. The whole experience felt like a punishing ordeal. Maybe the NT should just give-up trying to produce original musicals and Roald Dahl's back catalogue should be left on his bookcase for while.

Thought The Elephantom was jolly good. But an exception.

I did wonder about the creative team as (I could be wrong here) it seemed like neither the producer/writer and director had worked on musicals before and they are creatively such a different prospect to making dramas. I thought the choice of composer was also surprising. Of course surprising can be good, but it wasn't in this case.

I wonder if people would have been so accommodating if they had known just how many show stops they have been having. I’ve been several times and have a 60% show stop rate. While I have no doubt that the team are working extremely hard, that’s really not acceptable. I imagine being involved in this show has been a wild ride.

I know they have previously had a lot of trouble with the revolve but on Wednesday they were hammering a piece of the floor down about 20 mins in.

Is the set that complicated? It didnt look it me but then im no expert

That's what I was going to ask - I wonder what exactly is going wrong/breaking?

Someone up thread said before it opened that the NT's drum revolve has always been a problem and is regularly out of action. Seems they have been proved correct!

A mouse stuck in the revolve?

I saw this recently, we had no show stops.

I thought that the opening number was great and that we were in for a treat. After this, the next 20 minutes could probably be condensed down into one number.

I think that a problem the show has is that the end of the conference scene is the natural point for the interval, but they end up padding things out to lengthen the first act.

The wheels really came off in Act 2 for me - so much padding, and the kids other than Luke and Bruno are totally pointless.