The Hunger Games – live on stage? Sign me up because it sounds incredible!
Conor McPherson (most well known for writing the 2017 musical Girl from the North Country, based on the songs of Bob Dylan) sounds like the perfect person to adapt Suzanne Collins’s epic novel The Hunger Games.
This live theatrical stage show should be phenomenal
Walking around the newly purpose-built Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre, I felt like I was walking around that Willy Wonka Experience, which was such a disaster in Glasgow last year.
There are a few things on display that you can take pictures of/with but for the most part it feels like they ran out of money (or that the front of house experience was forgotten about when planning).
A missed opportunity
Directed by Matthew Dunster (2:22 – A Ghost Story, Hangmen, The Pillowman and most recently Hedda at Theatre Royal Bath) there isn’t really any set and most of the show is just actors sprinting from one end of the school gymnasium/arena to the other.
There are some nice video projections (including a cameo from John Malkovich as President Coriolanus Snow) but there seems to have been a missed opportunity to really create some incredible set pieces, especially for ‘the games’ in Act 2.
The incredible thing about The Hunger Games On Stage is that it has somehow managed to remove every bit of excitement from the story. Where was the excitement, the horror, the determination and the desperation to survive?
A lacklustre stage show
I never saw the troubled Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark but I fear The Hunger Games may follow a similar path. It just isn’t ready. The story is so incredibly powerful that it feels like an insult to devalue it in such a way with a lacklustre stage show.
The story of The Hunger Games
Set in a dystopian future, where once a year, two members of each of the twelve districts are selected by lottery to go in to an arena and fight to the death, until just one life remains. It is a battle for survival.
Katniss Everdeen, a fearless and resourceful heroine, emerges as a symbol of rebellion as she fights not only for her life but for the hope of a nation oppressed by a ruthless Capitol.
The cast are not to blame
The cast do as well as they can but the story feels like it has been stripped out.
Mia Carragher as Katniss Everdeen
Euan Garrett as Peeta Mellark
Joshua Lacey as Haymitch Abernathy
Tristan Waterson as Gale Hawthorne
Tamsin Carroll as Effie Trinket
Stavros Demetraki as Caesar Flickerman
Nathan Ives-Moiba as Cinna & Mayor
Sophia Ally as Prim Everdeen
Ruth Everett as Mrs. Everdeen
The Hunger Games franchise encompasses five critically acclaimed novels that have sold over 100 million copies worldwide and been translated into 52 languages as well as a blockbuster film franchise that has grossed more than $3.4 billion at the global box office.
Already extended and booking until October 2026, the show will have a decent life off the back of the franchise but as a piece of theatre it is very disappointing.
★★
West End Wilma
First photos of The Hunger Games On Stage have been released
Take a look at all the theatre shows playing in London’s West End right now
