Exciting for those of us who are somewhere in USA or could realistically travel there.... Logos Theatre is staging The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, and taking it on tour, firstly in Washington DC. 

It is some years since they staged this, and I am fairly sure this is a revision of their original script from several years ago. 

https://www.museumofthebible.org/events/lww

https://theacademyofarts.org/logos-theatre-on-tour/

I live far away, but I am dreaming up how I can get there to see the show. I have seen The Horse And His Boy, twice, at their home theatre in Taylors, SC. It was wonderful!  Some of you got to see Prince Caspian a few years ago too.

The Academy of Arts/Logos Theatre is one of a small number of  theatre companies whose adaptations of Narnia were always approved by Doug Gresham.

I hadn't noticed this threat before - I've seen a couple of stage productions of LWW before, one of them was an amateur one which was presented at a local university near where I was living in the late 1990s.  The production was quite good for an amateur production, but unfortunately I don't remember many details about it.  The other production I saw was much more memorable.  It was in January of 2003, it was made by Malcolm C. Cooke Productions and directed by Nadia Tass, starring Amanda Muggleton as the White Witch.  This production involved puppets and actors - the Aslan was quite impressive, and IMO looked more real than the BBC TV series Aslan.  I've been trying recently to see if I can see any video footage of it on YouTube or anywhere else on the internet, but haven't been able to - I do however still have the program from the production, a pamphlet promoting it and some newspaper cuttings about it.  When I went to see it, I purchased a snow globe which was one of the bits of merchandise they had available, and IMO was the best of the merchandise, however, sadly it wasn't great quality and ended up losing water and getting cracked.

I'll see if I can scan in and post up some of the things I have about this production if anyone's interested. 😀 

I've always wanted to see stage adaptions of Narnia. I've heard really good things about the productions the Logos Theater has done as well. Unfortunately too far away to catch one this time around. 

For anyone in the UK there's currently a production of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' on tour. 

https://www.lionwitchonstage.com/

@moonlit_centaur That's the same production I saw in London a few years ago — I reviewed it right at the start of this thread: https://community.narniaweb.com/index.php/community/general-movie-discussion/narnia-stage-adaptations/#post-4244

Basically, I wouldn't recommend it, but others with different tastes may enjoy it. 

Definitely avoid it!!  I saw the original production by this company, approved of by Douglas Gresham (who attended the opening), but later versions were much poorer and were shown as an adventure rather than the special story we love.  Aslan was not given the status and respect.

If you could afford it, I'd suggest you treat yourself to seeing the Logos Theatre production in Washington DC, which opens this weekend!  

EDIT on 21st Feb US time: It did not open last weekend, but a week later - THIS weekend! I've seen glimpses, but they've carefully avoided posting much of the main action online. 

https://theacademyofarts.org/logos-theatre-on-tour/ < -and elsewhere later this year and next year.

From May to August this year they are headed to Branson, Missouri and I might make the trip since that's more reasonable than Washington DC.

It seems like they might sell out the DC shows pretty quickly so probably best to get tickets now if any are interested!

Next week I'll be seeing a Norwegian adaptation of LWW. I'll include the intro page with ticket sales here, only to show 11 pictures from the performance. All the text in that intro is in Norwegian, so you would need to speak that or Swedish to understand. But most of it is about ordering tickets anyway. ("Kjøp billett" means "Buy ticket", so I guess you need to avoid that link.)

https://www.riksteatret.no/repertoar/legenden-om-narnia-loven-heksa-og-klesskapet/

Of these 11 pictures the first seems to have been made differently from the others, and is the only one that has a real text:

"Legenden om Narnia - Løven, heksa og klesskapet. Illustrasjon: Snakk"

(The Legend of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Illustration: "Snakk) (I guess that "Snakk" is some media firm)

The other pictures are photos, 2-11, and only have the names of the actors as text (plus "Foto: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard" to credit the photographer). You can press the arrows to move to the next or previous picture, but they also move slowly through the whole series on their own.

It seems that the actors are adults or young adults. It's probably because this is all going on a country-wide tour, by "Riksteatret", which only does tours, in order to make theatre available even in towns where there is no theatre. As long as the town has a venue which could show a concert, "Riksteatret" can perform their plays there. This also means that there is usually only one performance per town, the next day they travel to the next town and perform there, etc. etc. - which is rather demanding for the actors and means that you cannot really have child actors taking part.

It's been adapted by a Norwegian writer / director, who "lets us see the story through the children's eyes". I'm not sure what they've done about the Beavers, but perhaps Mrs Beaver is to the right in picture #6. Aslan is played by a man with a wig, and looks all right to me in the pictures - I only have the pictures to go by until Thursday next week, 13 March.

There is some cultural diversity - Lucy seems to be an African girl, and I don't think she's the only non-Scandinavian actor in the group. Towards the bottom of the page you find the faces and names first of all the 10 actors (skuespiller), and then of the 10 non-actors (director, producers, designers etc.).

*

An interesting issue for me is the fact that I'll be seeing this with a friend who doesn't know The Chronicles of Narnia! She's only taking my my word for it being an exciting story. I would think she's going to enjoy it, though and it will be interesting to talk about it afterwards. Better to talk about it with someone who has seen the same performance.

@varna Sounds interesting. Hope you and your friend have a good time.

Posted by: @varna

perhaps Mrs Beaver is to the right in picture #6

...this would not be the first time I've seen an anthropomorphic beaver depicted with large glasses. Is there some sort of stage costuming trope that makes that choice say 'beaver!' instead of some other critter??

It looks like it'd be a lot of fun to see. I hope you and your friend have a great time!

It was amazing!

My friend enjoyed it very much too. It's possible the production will be back in September, and we're hoping to go back and watch it again then. The actors do a great job.

It starts with the children - carrying suitcases - in front of the curtain. Their parents come to take farewell, their father in a soldier's uniform, and when he has said goodbye to them all, and to his wife, he goes up to an officer at the end of the platform. The officer gives him a gun (a rifle, perhaps), and he goes offstage, while the mother says goodbye to all the children. They then take their suitcases and line up, and then make rocking movements like inside a train.

With a cast of 10 people and a crew of another 10, and the fact that you have to pack everything down after the performance, travel to another town the next day and then pack it all out again before the next performance (and repeat day after day, week after week), you have to simplify quite a bit.

The background inside Narnia is a curtain, made as a large gobelin, with fauns, centaurs, a large queen/witch and a large lion (a bit William Morris-style). A few large white sheets lie on the floor, and when the children realise that Winter is gone and Spring is coming, they play with them and turn them around, and the other side of them is light green.

The witch has no dwarfs, and you only hear her sledge offstage. Aslan's entourage is represented by only one minotaur (he seems to be named "Mino"). And there is only one beaver - Mrs Beaver both meets the children in the woods, leads them to her home, serves them dinner and a marmalade roll, and tells them about Aslan. She combines seriousness and comedy - she climbs (precariously) onto a chair every time she quotes one of the old sayings or prophecies. She's a lovely character, and very well played.

The director has seen the need for a narrator, and solved it in a way I haven't seen done before - the children do some narration themselves (in third person) in between their lines. Lucy does most of it, and Edmund narrates some of his journey to the witch's castle - and after their coronation, each of them narrate their future and what titles were used for them by their people. And after they are back in England and have explained to the Professor about the missing fur coats, Lucy finishes the play with the words "And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia."

Aslan's death and the girls' mourning made good use of that narration. When the witch had used her knife, my friend asked me whether Aslan died, and I confirmed it. The girls then cried over Aslan's dead body, and they included most of the paragraph

"I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two. Hours and hours seemed to go by in this dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder."

And then Aslan comes back, and he explains to them about the Deeper Magic, that the witch doesn't know anything about.

In another post I mentioned a review of the production that I had read, and said that the reviewer points out that the production is a clear reminder of the spiritual themes that run through the whole Narnian universe. Having seen it, I agree with that reviewer.

My friend doesn't know about Narnia (until now), but she knows about "Lord of the Rings", so I told her that the authors were friends. I haven't discussed the play with her yet, but we'll go to a cafe together one of these days, and then we can have a proper talk about it.

I posted in this thread in January about a production of LWW I saw in the early 2000s - I wrote 2003, but it may have been 2004.  I'm not sure of the exact year - I'll confirm if/when I get out the newspaper cuttings etc. about it - if wanted?  Anyway... I was just reflecting on that the cast of that production - some of them anyway, Amanda Muggleton (the White Witch), and the puppeteers of the beavers, Tumnus and the dwarf performed at Sydney's Carols in the Domain in the lead up to Christmas 2003.  They sang "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"  - the irony of the White Witch singing that I find a little humorous!   I had it on video for quite a while, but ended up getting rid of the video cassettes...  You can see on YouTube however, the 2003 Carols in the Domain Finale - in which all the cast of that year were on stage, including Amanda Muggleton.