Pity the wolf. Was ever a creature so maligned? The last British wolf was killed in the Scottish Highlands by MacQueen, stalker to the Laird of Mackintosh, after it had savaged two children. That was in 1743. Yet, more than 250 years later, children still fear the slavering jaws of what is essentially an overgrown dog.
Literature has a lot to answer for, whether it’s Angela Carter’s fairy tales or Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, in which errant children are threatened with becoming “wolf porridge”. Neither story, though, quite matches The Wolves in the Walls for terror. In Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s picture book, the young heroine, Lucy, believes she can hear lupine rustlings behind the walls of her home. Seeking reassurance, she approaches her parents. “I’m sure it’s not wolves,” says her mother, “for you know what they say... If the wolves come out of the walls, it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?” asks Lucy.
“It,” replies her mother. “Everybody knows that.” Probably best not to read this as a bedtime story.
This strange tale may seem a strange choice for the first big show from the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS). When the National Theatre in London opened at the Old Vic in 1963, the first production was Hamlet, directed by Peter Hall and starring Peter O’Toole. Surely the Scots could have rustled up Brian Cox in Macbeth? It was never going to be that way. Unlike the National Theatre in London, the NTS has no contracted actors (save for a tiny education team), working instead through co-productions with Scotland’s existing theatre companies. Nor does it have a permanent home, and when you consider the millstone bricks and mortar have been to artistic directors elsewhere, that’s probably a blessing. It leaves more energy and more of the £4.5m annual budget to devote to the work.
One downside is that, without a building, you are asking the public to engage with an abstraction: would the National Theatre in London have cemented its position if it wasn’t anchored on the South Bank?
Potential pitfalls for the NTS were evident at its official launch in February. The opening event, Home, featured 10 productions around Scotland. In Shetland, fiddlers played on a ferry, while Edinburgh offered a children’s-eye view of First Minister’s Questions, starring Daniella Nardini and Tam Dean Burn. Glasgow’s show had abseiling cameramen filming a drama taking place inside an Easterhouse tower block, which was projected onto a screen outside; Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd starred. The message was unmistakable: here was a theatre for the whole country. It was hard, though, to escape the impression that, in some cases, artistic excellence had been sacrificed to the demands of accessibility.
The NTS’s unflappable artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, argues, with some justification, that 10,000 people saw the shows, far more than could have attended any red-carpet premiere. But the impression was of a missed opportunity to make a habitually patriotic Scottish public aware they had a new national institution of which to be proud. Publicity-wise, it didn’t help that the opening night was on the same Saturday Scotland beat England at rugby. Guess what got the front-page pictures on the Sunday.
Still, in a strong first season, there is new work from David Harrower, an overdue revival of Chris Hannan’s Elizabeth Gordon Quinn and a stage version of John Byrne’s Tutti Frutti. The Wolves in the Walls should add a little bite, too.
Featherstone (who previously ran Paines Plough) came across the book by chance. “I was in rehearsal with no childcare. I had to find something for my children. There it was in a bookshop.” The mask-maker Julian Crouch agreed to co-direct an adaptation. As one of the presiding spirits of Improbable Theatre, Crouch had a track record of helping gothic children’s stories to the stage. The team’s Shockheaded Peter — a “junk musical” based on Heinrich Hoffmann’s cautionary tales — has gone from West Yorkshire Playhouse via the West End to New York.
Why the interest in the macabre? “I have a short attention span,” says Crouch, in a break from rehearsals in Glasgow. “So wolves, or children having their thumbs cut off, hold my interest.”
With two weeks of rehearsals to go, the show is coming together: the four-person band is here for the first time, playing the haunting score by Nick Powell; and Featherstone is marshalling her cast of eight.
But the stars are the wolves. If there were an annual prize for puppet- making, Crouch would have it sewn up. Raised in Ayr, he won a collage competition at 14. He won a camera — but he was more excited by a tub of Copydex that came with it. His burlap-and-latex creations — with ping-pong-ball eyes and glue-stick teeth — leer from the rehearsal room’s corners. Big wolves with dangly legs work as body extensions. Smaller masks go on the actors’ heads. There is even one made from a litter-picker tied to elastic. Tap it and it lunges forward.
The effect is funny, but also haunting, exactly the tone The Wolves in the Walls strives for. “In a way, it’s quite serious,” Featherstone says. “All the best children’s stories are. Lucy’s family all have obsessions. Her father plays the tuba, her mother makes jam and her brother has video games. She’s got nothing, and wants them to focus on her, so she creates the wolves.”
Crouch cuts in: “There are a lot of interpretations. To me, there’s a global aspect to it. It’s like panics about immigration. The awful, unknown thing becomes normal very quickly. When the wolves come out of the wall, it’s not all over. It is more exciting.”
After centuries of abuse, the wolf may relish a little good press. At least, for once, nobody will complain if they huff, puff and bring the house down.
The Wolves in the Walls is at Glasgow Tramway from Saturday until April 8, then at the Lyric Hammersmith, W6, from April 12-29, before touring Scotland; www.nationaltheatrescotland.com
