Arifa Akbar

The outbursts of violence are few but they startle when they come; so are the sudden bursts of tears, which are moving. In the end, it is not the play you imagine it to be, with no binary equation of victim/villain. Each of these characters is a victim of the system, hanging on, just – even Hart’s comical protection officer, whose outburst about his ground-down rights contains a sting.

Falstaff’s crew of revellers and rustic yokels seem like a cross between Rooster’s “friends, outcasts and leeches” from Jerusalem and a modern, Fagin-like gang of burglars and pickpockets, with Falstaff as their head, and Mistress Quickly a particular highlight in Clare Perkins. We meet Hal (Toheeb Jimoh) staggering among them in underpants precariously slipping off (have we have seen a mooning prince before?).

Some scenes glitter with dark energy, and are truly tragic. Others feel protracted, the play’s old-fashioned exposition exposed, and the over-used device of characters narrating memories feeling like lengthy confessions. The circularity of family argument and accusation, are grinding too, and do not always absorb us, emotionally. At three and a half hours it feels withering. Then again, that is the point here. This is the ultimate family reckoning, with some light, but mostly shade.

Unadventurous musical adaptations of films comprise a crowded corner in the West End, but this one seems to shake up musical theatre itself. It may be the most unusual thing on the London stage right now and is captivating in its glittering strangeness.

It takes a while for the dark magic to kick in. As the narrator, Hermes, Melanie La Barrie is full of swagger and has a stupendous voice yet the story is formless, with one song after another and little forward momentum. The alchemy is created quietly and somewhere in the first act you find yourself hooked.

There are lovely bits nonetheless including effervescent verbal riffs and snatches of song, although sentimentality and nostalgia soften the edges. Butterworth is reaching for the epic and there is a characteristic daring in that ambition but Rob Howell’s gorgeous set, dominated by a beautiful staircase, has heights and depths that the play itself does not reach.

Never mind the comedy on stage, this is a celebrity circus. Even costume changes get audience oohs and aahs. It seems oddly disproportionate because, as exciting as it may be to see Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw on stage, the production is flat and forgettable, not testing either actor’s seasoned skills on the boards (though this is Parker’s debut in the West End).

It starts with those floating red letters and that electro-ethereal music. The intro creates the surreal effect of Netflix’s sci-fi juggernaut being brought to life as a stage-sized facsimile before our eyes. But the big surprise about this prequel to the TV series, about high-schoolers who tap into the dangerous world of the Upside Down, is that it is neither derivative nor an exercise in imitation. This is breathtaking theatre with its own arresting imagination.

If the script channels Dahl’s linguistic agility and imagination, it cleans up his darkness. The witches are more comical than abominable and there is a lo-fi cutesiness to the children’s transformations into inanimate objects (they pop sweetly out of boxes in cardboard costumes). The biggest fright comes when a phone rings in the auditorium and the High Witch loses it.

Staged at a hurtling two hours with no interval, it is almost cinematic in its action-packed speed, which on stage appears like haste. Actors barrel from one scene to another with too few pauses. This divests the play of its deep, meditative qualities on the nature of being, ageing and questions of the soul.

It is precisely because Scott is so exceptional that we want more than the actorly somersaults he performs. By its nature this playful dramatic experiment cannot allow him to penetrate any one part deeply or devastatingly enough for the tragedy to be truly felt by the end. As a concept, the production bears all the thoughtful postmodern experimentalism of the Wooster Group but because its tone leans towards the mischievous and picaresque, it ends up looking like the Reduced Chekhov Company, certainly in the earlier scenes.

The standout is Lane who makes Danvers a powerful force, creepily obsessed with her former mistress. Her relationship with the callow second Mrs De Winter and the morbid triad between the women, including the absent Rebecca, contains enough grip and tension for its own potential spin-off.

The nudity is hardly shocking in the mix of it all, and comes so often that we feel inured to the sight of men – mostly Norton – slipping out of their trousers. Where Yanagihara faced some charges of appropriation in her depiction of male friendship and gay desire, that criticism cannot be applied to this adaptation by Koen Tachelet, Van Hove and Yanagihara. The consensual sex, when it comes, does not seem gratuitous.

Coleman and Turner are endearing together, although they remain cutesy for too long, repeating riffs on their first meeting in a pet cemetery. The script repeats its ideas on protest too but has deft scenes that show how words can conceal and also how apparent banalities can carry value and meaning. There is good use of silence as the couple hit the buffers of wordlessness, and their relationship gathers power when the actors drop their romcom routine and become more real and tender, albeit rather late in the day.

While its plot has the feel of a twisty crime thriller and a textbook villain in the dastardly count who holds the house to ransom, we are so engaged by what it asks of us and its tension that the melodrama does not jar. Last year the Donmar became a victim of Arts Council England’s funding cuts. This must-watch show more than proves its worth.