A Monster Calls
Old Vic, London

PATRICK NESS’S award-winning children’s novel about 13-year-old Conor, who comes to terms with his mother’s terminal cancer through the creation of a fantasy monster, is powerfully emotive material. Following in the wake of a visually spectacular 2016 film, any theatre adaptation is faced with a challenge and it's one that this production certainly meets.

The stage, bare apart from a projection screen and a set of ropes dangling from the flies, allows the cast to become the elements of Conor’s world as they proffer breakfast, populate his classroom and generate the monster of his dreams.

The multi-functional ropes in director Sally Cookson and designer Michael Vale's staging are twisted into the yew tree monster, enabling some striking aerial sequence in the creation of the elemental Green Man monster, played by Stuart Goodwin. His physicality and digitally enhanced vocals create an ambiguously menacing figure who demands one true story in return for three darkly puzzling fairy tales.

Matthew Tennyson, excellent as the withdrawn and bullied Conor, painfully clings to hope and wilfully rejects both the inevitable and any help from family or friends. Likewise, Marianne Oldham excels as a mother dealing with both her son’s blind hope and anger as failing health gradually erodes her optimism.

But this is a show which really belongs to the whole company. They have devised an integrated, captivating production where Benji Bower’s atmospheric live score, Dick Straker’s nightmarish projections and Matt Costain’s aerial routines are all contributory elements to an ensemble performance that imaginatively generates Conor’s emotional world.

Memorable visual images, touches of humour and profoundly moving moments cement this production as a powerful, thought-provoking show that avoids sentimentality while dealing with love and loss. A must for older children and adults alike.

Runs until August 25, box office: oldvictheatre.com