By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Saturday 18 November (matinee), opens 21 November and runs through 27 January 2024

The best thing about this new musical version of the beloved Road Dahl children’s tale is Daniel Rigby’s comic turn as an increasingly exasperated Devon hotelier who is Basil Fawlty played by Eric Morecambe.

• Read on for reasons including how this compares with Dahl’s Matilda The Musical

His opening song Magnificent is well-named and introduces the Bournemouth hotel he runs, the titular Hotel Magnificent, and on his arrival suddenly 1 feels that this musical might live up to the dark promise of Dahl’s story of an orphaned boy adopted by his grandmother who hunts witches.

Sally Ann Triplett’s cigar-smoking Norwegian Gran is played brilliantly also and her introduction How To Recognise A Witch is laugh-out-loud funny as we learn with an initially disbelieving orphan Luke to be on the look-out for pinched shoes around square feet, wigs masking bald heads and gloves covering clawed hands.

Who wouldn’t love a relative who encourages her grandson not to bathe so the ‘stinkwaves’ children emit that witches can smell would be concealed?

There’s also real strength in the ensemble and we recognised Miracle Chance (Be More Chill, Shaftesbury Theatre), Maggie Service (from Amazon Prime’s Good Omens), Zoe Birkett (Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Piccadilly Theatre) and Bobbie Little (Standing At The Sky’s Edge, National Theatre).

But is it as good as that other Dahl classic book-turned-musical Matilda (Cambridge Theatre), which has been running in the West End since 2011, had a Broadway transfer and was also a recent film?

It starts promisingly with A Note About Witches and the idea that witches are more likely to be wearing M&S cardigans than stereotypical images of capes and broomsticks that they have cunningly perpetuated since Shakespeare’s Macbeth so they can continue their work of turning children into everyday household items or animals.

But while Katherine Kingsley’s Grand High Witch sang impressively we wished she could have been as genuinelly terrifying as Anjelica Huston in the 1990 film we remember rather than the flirty Scandinavian she is oddly portrayed as here.

The good news is that The Witches does spell some understanding of what a Christmas family show should be after the National’s woeful festive offering last year Hex which was quite possibly the worst production we’ve seen on any stage – let alone the National’s.

When it works – usually when Rigby and Triplett are onstage – The Witches is a dark broomstick ride of delight to enchant all the family this Christmas.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy National Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen The Witches before or been to the National Theatre?
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