The stage adaptation of Max Porter's novel Lanny at Bristol Old Vic blends horror, humour, and ancient myth in a rural noir that has been likened to Tales of the Unexpected meets Jackanory. The drama follows a couple who move to an English village, only for their son to vanish, with a pagan figure looming over the ensuing police investigation.
A Family's New Life Interrupted
Robert (Raj Bajaj) and Jolie (Hanora Kamen), a couple from the city, are just settling into their new rural home when their son, Lanny (Lucian Thomas on press night), goes missing. A local artist, dubbed "Mad Pete" (Richard Cant), who had formed a friendship with Lanny, becomes the prime suspect. The myth of Dead Papa Toothwort, a pagan figure, hangs over the human drama as the police procedural unfolds.
Bea Roberts' adaptation deftly handles the novel's blend of reality, imagination, and hallucinatory bucolic lore, while Nancy Medina's direction keeps the production full of pace and creepiness.
Haunting Design and Atmospheric Effects
Rebecca Jane Wood's haunted set design incorporates the village and its woodland, with screens showing scratchy images of bare branched trees and antler-figured silhouettes, reminiscent of a Brothers Grimm storybook. Zeynep Kepekli's contrasting warm and cold lighting design captures the chilling magic of Dead Papa Toothwort's parallel world.
The production smartly bridges the dark and scary with the satirical and light, though it is heavy on green man mythology at first and does not give enough space to domestic realism. The many voices of the village and the babble of modern life criss-cross in disembodied audio, sometimes accompanied by floating sentences written across the set.
Themes of Parenthood and Belonging
The story ultimately explores the pain, responsibility, and sometimes emotional disconnect in parenthood. As Robert reflects, "who can have children and not go completely mad?" Jolie is excellently played by Kamen as a mother left broken and furious by her loss, while Johnson-Dutfield does a great job of bringing Lanny to life.
Village homophobia is made more emphatic, and there is an added racial element: Lanny is a brown boy, but this does not feel fully developed. Some of the book's underlying anxieties, such as the sense of dislocation for urban folk in a village environment and the question of who belongs here, are lost among the many strands.
A Surreal Finale
The production swings into the surreally hallucinatory in its final scene. The happy ending might be a story, a song, or a miracle – a pagan god showing mercy to the humans that occupy his land. Lanny runs at Bristol Old Vic until 7 November.
