Magical Narnia will banish winter blues

C.S. LEWIS’S story has become a bit of a festive chestnut, and there’s a danger that familiarity might breed contempt.

Director Sally Cookson has, however, woven a different spell over the tale of four wartime evacuees. With her designer, Rae Smith, and folksy musical collaborator Benji Bower, she’s turned it into a heartily organic yarn rooted in rural legend and tradition.

It’s quite a circus event, with the White Witch’s acrobatic minions flapping giant sheets to represent snow drifts and twirling from silks in mid-air as her frozen statuary.

I had completely forgotten that Santa shows up, and here he arrives in a red-and-white Morris dancing outfit and dispenses weapons to our four heroes.

As the children, Cookson has cast mixed-race young adults with strong Leeds accents. This goes down very well with the audience.

I was less convinced by their prowess in battle, however. It might have worked better to fight off stage instead of offering up an effete spectacle of martial art mime.

Carla Mendonca fits the bill as the lean, mean Witch dressed in tight, glittery white fabrics and with icicle scissor hands.

She supervises a nicely sinister parade of carnival puppet-ghouls from hell, as well as the astonishingly lithe Ira Mandela Siobhan as her enforcer wolf Maugrim.

Iain Johnstone settles the little ’uns as a majestic Aslan, bringing to mind Hagrid from Harry Potter.

Bower’s inventive music climaxes in a big Ceilidh celebrating summer and on a freezing Yorkshire afternoon, the heat generated by this warmly imaginative performance was welcome indeed.