A marriage of magic and the power of theatre, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a thrilling show which pushes stagecraft to its boundaries. It is an escape from reality and draws you out of any doubtful thoughts as you plummet into the exciting world of mystery and imagination.

Neil Gaiman’s ‘most personal story’ to date quite literally brings to shore an exploration of memory, imagination, the boundaries between the world we take for granted and the world beyond what we know. Director Katy Rudd has pulled together quite phenomenally a theatrical masterpiece enriched by the means of puppetry, physical theatre and lighting. Rudd had contacted Gaiman in 2016 when they began to develop ideas, which then evolved over the course of time.

The play is centered around an unnamed Boy, played by Samuel Blenkin, who finds safe haven in books rather than other people and has an untamed imagination; he goes on to discover unthinkable wonders of the unknown by meeting eccentric  Lettie Hemstock (Marli Siu) at her farm, along with her equally enigmatic family. They explore the world of ‘fleas’ which are creatures that lie at the ‘edges’ of the ocean, in another world and want to enter ours. The seamless joining of realism and the magical can be attributed to the raw performances of all of the actors, who portray emotions in a heightened and unambiguous way.

An aspect of the play I admired was the gradual build up of the abnormal, beginning with a 50p coin being discovered in a fish and then reappearing in our protagonist’s mouth during sleep, to him being hunted by ‘hunger birds’ at the end of the play. This helped the audience ease into the spectacularly magical world of our characters and see everything at their level.

Certain scenes in the show that thoroughly captivated me were the ones which married the use of puppetry and physical theatre. When the ‘flea’ emerged from the cave, I was in awe of the intricacy and detail of the large puppet that had been created by Samuel Wyer, the Puppetry designer. The actors holding up the puppet did an incredible job of portraying the ‘flea’s’ character, through their harsh but rhythmic movements. Finn Caldwell did an incredible job in puppetry directing: there was this wonderful fight scene between Lettie and the ‘flea’ from the other world, yet it was done at a distance through a series of powerful arm gestures and grunts. 

Pippa Nixon plays Ursula, the human embodiment of the flea which manages to infiltrate the boy’s body during their first encounter. I am not joking! Nixon’s character is the flame which inspires the boy’s family divide, and heightens the tension and drama in the play in a concatenation of breathtaking scenes, including one with the boy and his dad in the bathtub and one with the boy’s mind being read by Ursula. In these scenes, a prop aspect I especially enjoyed was the doors that would come up out of the floor, as it contributed to this magical tingle I could feel throughout.

One way that lighting was used cleverly was towards the end of the play when a purple light created our Boy’s metaphorical ‘homie’, where the ‘hunger birds’ could not get to him. When I think ‘homie’, I think of the spot I would stand in if I did not want to be called ‘it’ in primary school. But for our character, this ‘homie’ was a memory that made him feel safe, which is part of the deeper message of the play - our memories shape who we are and what we find safety in, rather than what we look like to others on the outside.

The stage itself seemed simple at first. However, light was used to create shadows of trees during the night, for example, which transformed everything. Props were brought on to the stage in a fast manner and time frequently switched around. Interestingly, the concept of time itself was played like a fiddle! We actually see the actor portraying the boy’s father becoming the boy at the end of the story even though we had learnt that they were polar opposite earlier on in the play. Again, our parents are part of us, and many of our memories are made with them and it alludes to how we cannot separate our upbringing from the people we become - however hard we may try.

My favourite aspect of the show was the physical theatre. It just added so much beauty to the show in a way I had not experienced in a long time and I loved how the bodies were used to create so many different shapes.

I did find it peculiar that Gaiman’s most personal story to date was one surrounding interdimensional fleas and hunger birds and other worlds and fish coming out of mouths. But if we consider the fact that the boy was unnamed, we can come to realise that even though not all of us are ‘huge bookworms’ like him, we all struggle with a fear of how others see us. I believe that was the main trait of the boy Gaiman and Rudd wanted us to zoom in on: the boy was so concerned about being seen as weak and worthless, which we all inevitably do at times. 

This play will inspire you to let go of your fears, constraints and inhibitions, forget about how you appear to others and let your imagination go wild. I would recommend this play to anyone, young or old, who wishes to be transported into a place where anything is possible. You will truly live vicariously through the actors whilst watching this play.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane made me laugh, cry, and experience the magic of theatre to the highest degree.

It is running at the Dorfman theatre until the 25th of January.

Written By Ariana Mokarrami of St Catherines School, Twickenham