(seen at the afternoon preview performance on 8th November 2025)
This one has been many years arriving. Back in 1999, before Collins, Japanese journalist Koushun Takami wrote “Battle Royale.” A school bus is hijacked by the authorities. The children have remote-control explosive devices put around their necks, and are forced to fight to the death until one remains. Sound familiar?
Back to “Hunger Games.” First announced in 2014 for a purpose-built theatre next to Wembley Stadium, then more than a decade in limbo, it finally turns up in a semi-permanent building in the shadow of Canary Wharf’s towers. Sort of suitable for a story of absolute power set in a contrasting world of a ring of money surrounded by poverty.
For those who don’t know, this is Suzanne Collin’s tale of Panem, a dystopian United States of America (well, another dystopian United States of America). The Capitol is doing just fine now it has suppressed the Districts. Each year, those zones must choose two children to compete in a “to-the-death” highly political television game show.
That’s a lot to stage, and this takes a fair punt at it.
Adaptor Conor McPherson states in the programme that he feels allowing the narrative form of the book – which has Katniss (Mia Carragher) speaking her thoughts and actions – takes the right direction for his script.
This leads to static sequences full of slightly squeaky vocals echoing around a vast performance space. It is “tell and not show” and prevents director Mathew Dunster from finding and using the most vital ingredient for productions of this scale – its own unique theatrical voice.
Had he developed one, the show would undoubtedly have bound itself together into the same single entity feel that makes both books and movies (and the monkey is not usually a fan of movie adaptations – Potter, you rotter, for example) so gripping.
Instead, it is sporadically engaging. The storytelling may baffle those unfamiliar with the books, with several unexplained jumps in continuity, many characters appearing only briefly and few, if any, opportunities to develop most of them.
For a book interested in the politics of rebellion, the plutocratic dictatorship appears infrequently, John Malkovich’s video contribution as President Snow a throwback to 1950s “Flash Gordon” ‘Ming The Merciless’ at the cinema. Leering and hectoring without menace, we learn only in closing remarks just how angry his entire government really is – that is is not just personal as some may assume.
The vast space with seating on all sides does not allow us to engage closely with intimate scenes either, while the action sequences rely sadly on a lot of running about in circles. A theatrical trope always putting the monkey in mind of hamster wheels, and sapping gravity from what is a fairly serious piece.
Also from the programme (a handy, if expensive, tome), set designer Miriam Buether states her wish to allow us to imagine more than they show of the Districts, Capitol and even the Arena.
Lighting gantries become trees, there’s an interestingly futuristic train carriage and a neatly depicted cabin. Video screens spew sometimes spurious information, and four sections of seats (section 2 in particular, where the monkey was situated, worse luck) move back and forth to open out the stage area from arena to thrust or traverse as required.
Annoyingly, these moves prove noisy for those seated here and happen during dialogue sequences, and the novelty soon wears a little thin. Indeed, they do the “Hokey Cokey” enough times that we are half waiting for the next move and wishing we had taken “Quells” beforehand.
What we don’t get through all of this is a sense of awe, domination and rebellion that should makes the story compelling.
In fairness, costume designer Moi Tran comes up with outfits perfect to each situation, the games uniforms and outrageous Capitol fashions a particular triumph. Choreographer Charlotte Broom has a few “Les Misérables” tribute moments, plus is asked to supply some very strange dance moves to maybe cover cast moves to their next entrances and assorted other technical happenings.
The cast itself try valiantly to connect with the audience, the lack of universal laughter or other responses confirming the distance between us. Still, they work hard in a fairly risky environment requiring most of them to dangle from safety wires, dodging deep holes as well as blocks of moving customers.
Carragher manages to just about convince us of Katniss’s good and rebellious sides. Sadly, without intimacy we cannot share entirely her kindness to Rue (Aiya Agustin, doing well to impact in the tiny space allowed).
Likewise, Euan Gaarrett’s Peeta cannot be entirely the gentle soul of page and screen, but works towards both.
The bigger characters fair far better. Stavros Demetraki steals the show as TV host Caesar Flickerman, the only person to emerge truly unscathed by script or production by dint of a huge celebrity personality he can expand to fill available space.
Tamsin Carroll does decently as Effie Trinket, helped as with Demetraki by vivid outfit and broad writing.
For Joshya Lacey, Hamitch Abernathy – victor and victim of a previous Hunger Games – his first appearance as town drunk makes the most impact, and it is unfortunate that he is mostly relegated to soundbites after.
This show has been three years in planning, after a decade of promises. It demonstrates just why an action-packed book and film jammed with visual effects requires a massive leap of creativity and investment to even attempt a staging.
Fans of the franchise in other forms will feel that the odds are evens in their favour for this production.
Our hunger is never quite satisfied by this mismatched theatrical menu which lacks the humanity and much of the tension of the books and scale of the films.
Gutsy, bold, but lacking a coup-de-theatre, this leaves us, the mockingjays in the audience, without a simple message to absorb and return repeatedly. An echo at best, but it is a chance to meet old friends again and is a reminder of the misuse of state power at an appropriate time in our history.
3 stars.
Note: The monkey has made a few notes on the auditorium here. It did not feel, at early previews, particularly safe in the narrow corridors during the intervals and leaving down a single overcrowded stairway.
It urges strongly that if you are visiting to choose seats in districts 1, 10 and 3 to be closer to the exits, and to wait in your seats until the crush outside has dissipated.
Do also be aware, if in the District 2 area, that when leaving it appears there is little reminder that there is a huge drop from first to ground level if a child should go running off and attempt to find the door you entered by (which differs from the one you leave by). Keep them under supervision and keep well away from that section’s original entrance area, just to be safe. Also do not open any door in the corridor leading to that entrance area – another drop is behind it; there is also a drop behind the black curtain on the non-auditorium side as you walk down the corridor towards the exit.