Wolf gang

Coming out These not-so-cuddly canines break through in The Wolves in the Walls.

Photo: Richard Campbell

Monsters under the bed seem downright tame compared with the beasts lurking out of sight in the New Victory Theater’s production of The Wolves in the Walls, a musical adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name by Neil Gaiman (Stardust) and David McKean (Cages).

Originally inspired by a dream of Gaiman’s young daughter, Wolves tells the story of Lucy, a lonely little girl whose distracted family ignores her concerns about the “creeping, creaking, crumpling noises” she hears behind the walls in her bedroom—until, that is, the wolves come out, just as big and bad as Lucy feared.

“As soon as I read the book I thought it had stage potential,” says Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, which premiered the show last year in Glasgow. She immediately enlisted Scottish composer Nick Powell and Improbable theater company’s Julian Crouch to adapt the story for the stage, starting with the score.

“We knew it had to be very musically oriented,” she says. “Nick penned a musical response to the book, and we had several workshops where we wrote songs and played with the idea of who the wolves were. The hardest challenge has been the wolves actually coming out of the walls. It’s as much about what you don’t see as what you do.”

What you do see, incidentally, is pretty impressive—as anyone who caught Improbable’s Shockheaded Peter, which also ran at the New Vic, might expect: puppet wolves as eerily unforgettable as David McKean’s original art, and spooky shadow projections that are straight out of a nightmare. All that may sound more chilling than child-friendly, but those involved with the show insist that young audiences can handle it.

“It’s never been our style to present ultrasafe work,” says Mary Rose Lloyd, director of programming at the New Victory. “Quite often, kids want to get a little scared; you don’t want to go over the line and traumatize them, and this work doesn’t.” In fact, it may positively rouse them: Wolves is about conquering, not giving in to, anxieties, according to Gaiman, who contributed additional lyrics to the stage version of his story.

“Ultimately,” says Featherstone, “the piece starts off as scary but deals with the fact that when you face your fears, things are never as bad as you think.” Which is exactly what our protagonist learns: After being driven out of her family’s house by the predators, Lucy rallies her family to fight back—and finds that the initially fearsome creatures have begun to exhibit some surprisingly human characteristics. (Without giving away too much, there’s a fabulous scene featuring apron-wearing, vacuum-wielding wolves.)

While the New Vic recommends the show to “anyone over age 6 who’s not a scaredy-cat,” parents with any doubts can check out clips of the show on the theater’s website (newvictory.org)—and, of course, read the book.

The Wolves in the Walls runs Fri 5–Sun 21.