The Hunger Games on stage review – flickers of brilliance that don’t catch fire
- Alice White
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
The show has opened at the purpose-built Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre
Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games hardly needs an introduction. To bring any unaware theatregoers up to speed, the original novel is set in a dystopian world divided into 12 districts ruled by the decadent Capitol, where each year two young people are selected to fight to the death in a televised contest. When her younger sister is chosen, Katniss Everdeen volunteers in her place, unwittingly sparking a rebellion that will upend the social order (and Katniss’ own life). Five films and four follow-up novels later, it is nothing short of a global phenomenon.
Bringing that kind of sprawling story to the stage is no small feat. The new adaptation comes from Conor McPherson, a writer currently having something of a London moment – his five-star revival of The Weir is running in the West End, Girl from the North Country returned to the Old Vic over the summer, and his new piece The Brightening Air premiered there earlier this year.
He still feels like a slightly surprising choice for the project. McPherson’s best work often explores quiet despair and spiritual unrest – not exactly the obvious fit for a blockbuster YA property that moves with frantic agility from plot beat to plot beat. The result, directed by Matthew Dunster, is a show that often feels caught between two impulses: thoughtful character study and full-throttle spectacle, and never really satisfyingly landing either.
You can see what draws McPherson to the story’s early chapters in District 12. He’s clearly fascinated by the weary lives of people living under oppression, trying to scrape together some sense of purpose, or even a meal to eat. Many times throughout the play, he pulls the drama back to Katniss’ loved ones and families in District 12, plunged into turmoil as she wades through the bloody entertainment.
There’s a whiff of Girl from the North Country in the way he writes about poverty and hope side by side. His version of Katniss’s journey – from wary survivor to someone who begins to see the political power in her actions and agency – is finely observed, even if the script occasionally labours under its own exposition.
Mia Carragher makes her professional debut as Katniss, and it’s quite a statement of arrival. She handles the long stretches of narration with assured poise, but what stands out is her physical performance. The second act, set in the Hunger Games arena, barely lets up for a second. She’s climbing lighting rigs, vaulting onto platforms, darting through clouds of smoke – it’s a test of stamina as much as acting, and she comes through it with real conviction.
Her chemistry with Euan Garrett, playing Peeta Mellark, gives the piece some much-needed warmth amid all the danger. Garrett has an easy charm that plays nicely against Carragher’s guardedness.
Joshua Lacey, as the drunken mentor and former Games winner Haymitch, is another highlight – funny, unpredictable and given more to do here than the dishevelled Woody Harrelson on screen. Tamsin Carroll’s Effie Trinket is all surface polish and sharp edges, though you rarely glimpse what’s behind the Capitol gloss; not hinting at some of the nuance that might come later in the series feels like a missed opportunity here.
The star casting of John Malkovich as President Snow, presented via low-energy pre-recorded video, feels largely like an unnecessary addition. The slimy showman Caesar Flickerman has an unnerving magnetism thanks to Stavros Demetraki, and McPherson has the smart idea to use Flickerman’s role as commentator and presenter to bridge scenes between the arena and the Capitol.
Miriam Buether’s set is predictably impressive. Having designed Stranger Things: The First Shadow, she knows how to combine cinematic scale with practical theatricality. If anything, you wish the show would push its own visual identity a little further. It borrows bits and pieces from the films – in costumes, projections and graphic flourishes – but never quite decides whether it wants to embrace or escape their influence. Trinket’s outfit, for instance, hint at flamboyance without fully committing to it – she certainly needs another costume change or two.
The newly built Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre has been designed to house the show, complete with movable seating banks that shift around the action. One moment you’re watching something that feels like a gladiatorial traverse; the next, a tightly-focused coliseum. It’s a clever idea that might have felt gimmicky in lesser hands, but here it works, keeping the audience off balance in the right ways.
Dunster’s direction largely keeps the various strands of Panem’s storylines in tight focus, and the team have a lot of fun when the tributes reach the Capitol. The fights, choreographed by Kevin McCurdy, are consistently inventive. The act one training sequence is one of the show’s high points, giving a sense of rhythm and danger without ever slipping into repetition. In the second-half arena scenes, McCurdy keeps the movement varied and engaging, ensuring that each encounter feels distinct. One key death, among the most devastating in the source material, is handled with real precision – a passage that lands with genuine authenticity.
Lucy Carter’s lighting and Ian Dickinson’s sound design are both strong, even if the latter could be a touch bolder. McPherson sprinkles in easter eggs for the fans – nods not only to the original trilogy, but the further spin-off novels Collins has written in the passing years. There’s also a fun comparison to be made between spectators in the auditorium and Panem’s viewers hooked to their screens. Are we as complicit as they are by indulging in this spectacle?
Even rich questions don’t stop the lingering frustration that the show doesn’t quite decide what it wants to be, caught between introspection and bombast and never allowing the two to support one-another. It could easily lose 15 or 20 minutes and feel sharper for it.
“Effie Trinket fundamentally altered who I am as a person”, I heard a 20-something whisper to their friend as they entered the cavernous Troubadour auditorium before the show. You have to hope that the play left them satisfied. It has just enough theatrical invention to justify its existence beyond the films, while Carragher’s debut is a genuine highlight. A lot of fan emotions have been riding on this going well. This may not be a flawless victory for either McPherson or the franchise, but you can’t fault anyone for lack of ambition by giving it a go.
Comments