On Stage pulsates with vitality however lacks a beating coronary heart — assessment

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In some ways, the chances are in favour of The Hunger Games: On Stage. Like all nice dystopian literature, Suzanne Collins’ 2008 younger grownup novel extrapolated from actual world developments to create a nightmarish imaginative and prescient of a future post-apocalyptic North America, the place disadvantaged youngsters play a brutal survival recreation for the leisure of the rich (the thought got here to her whereas channel-surfing between TV recreation reveals and conflict footage). This new iteration for the stage may scarcely be extra resonant, opening in London simply after the storming success of the BBC’s actuality present The Celebrity Traitors and towards a political backdrop of worldwide inequality and ideological extremes.

It additionally fields an enormous, custom-built venue within the aptly smooth Canary Wharf space, and a crack artistic crew: author Conor McPherson (whose masterpiece The Weir is presently within the West End), director Matthew Dunster (whose thriller 2:22 — A Ghost Story is on tour) and good designer Miriam Buether, whose glittering darkish area looks like a modern-day equal of the Colosseum. They seize on the chance provided by stay efficiency to show the viewers into complicit spectators. Meanwhile, Collins has talked about structuring her books like three-act performs, which helps a transition to stage. Yet regardless of all this, although visually spectacular and typically ingenious, the ensuing present proves a curiously empty spectacle.

The finest diversifications typically honour the spirit of the unique whereas discovering a voice pure to the brand new medium. Here the script, drawing on the primary novel in Collins’ trilogy and the 2012 Lionsgate movie, by no means fairly achieves that distinctive, impartial dramatic life. In the guide, we expertise occasions by means of the eyes of 16-year-old Katniss, who, for the reason that tragic demise of her father, has grow to be a wily hunter to help her mom and youthful sister. So when she, along with the baker’s son Peeta, grow to be “tributes”, competing for his or her district within the grotesque Hunger Games, it’s by means of her that we encounter the excesses of the Capitol, the horrors of fight, the worry of betrayal.

But first-person narrative could be laborious to tug off on stage, and that, along with inevitable compression, means Mia Carragher’s charismatic, spirited Katniss principally pinballs by means of the opening sections filling in exposition as she goes. It additionally implies that her character incessantly narrates her personal ideas and emotions, which has a flattening impact. The play hits the identical beats because the novel however with much less shading and subtlety and sometimes feels rushed. Complex points, reminiscent of Katniss’s conflicted emotions about Peeta, land with much less nuance. 

The present definitely pulses with vitality, with the effective, athletic younger forged tumbling throughout the house and combating as they dangle horizontally from the rafters. It additionally makes spectacular use of the scope of the world: at one level Katniss and Peeta soar above the viewers in flaming robes and a fiery chariot. Some seating blocks transfer to sculpt the taking part in house, whereas characters typically burst out of a pit beneath the stage. Chris Fisher supplies good illusions, Lucy Carter dramatic lighting, and big screens flash up video-game-style menus or filmed pronouncements from John Malkovich’s coldly distant President Snow.

But there are additionally some surprisingly redundant dance sequences and complicated plot twists. Audience interplay feels oddly halfhearted. And, maybe most crucially, there’s little emotional impression. We are watching youngsters die — that ought to hit laborious, nevertheless it doesn’t. The present is at its most transferring when it turns into extra intimate. Joshua Lacey finds depths in video games mentor Haymitch. And when Euan Garrett’s likeable Peeta is injured, each he and Carragher have house to behave quietly, subtly and in truth. Suddenly you actually see them as courageous, advanced youngsters defying hatred with compassion. More of that will be welcome.

★★☆☆☆

Booking to October 2026, thehungergamesonstage.com