Modern rethinking of the Slavic myths of the Baba Yaga

The House with Chicken Legs at the Oxford Playhouse, from September 21-23. Review by JON LEWIS

THE House with Chicken Legs, adapted by Oliver Lansley from Sophie Anderson’s award-winning children’s novel of the same name, and directed by Lansley and James Seager for their company Les Enfants Terribles, is a modern rethinking of the Slavic myths of the Baba Yaga, a witch figure that can both reward and punish.

In Anderson’s narrative, Baba Yaga is divided into two characters, Baba (Lisa Howard), a grandmother figure living in a pretty East European decorated wooden house (designer, Jasmine Swan) that moves on chicken legs. It’s a living house, with cast members acting as the house’s servants wearing skeleton-designed outfits (costumes, Samuel Wyer), and performing as a band for the many numbers in the show composed by Alexander Wolfe, although the lyrics were sometimes drowned out by the piped element of the music.

Yaga (Stephanie Levi-John) and her house live in New Orleans. Whilst the songs in Baba’s house are full of Russian peasant tunes, Yaga’s home is infused with the sounds of the blues, with Yaga celebrating the Day of the Dead. Baba and Yaga have magical powers that are less about witchcraft and more to do with shamanism and voodoo priestesses. Both women have an important role; as their homes roam the world, they attract the spirits of the recently departed, they listen to the souls’ life stories, and in Baba’s case, offer them a bowl of borscht soup. They then remove their masks, and then usher them through a gate to the stars that are depicted in Nina Dunn’s spectacular animated designs at the rear of the stage.

The central figure in the drama is Marinka (Eve de Leon Allen), a 12-year-old girl who learns who she really is throughout the story. Initially she believes she is Baba’s granddaughter, her backstory told using Wyer’s delightful puppets) but gradually she discovers her place is far more liminal. It takes two fellow youngsters, one dead, Nina (Elouise Warboys), a desert dweller in Latin America, and one living, Ben (Michael Barker), a Scottish lad who likes football, to usher Marinka towards her fated destiny of facilitating loss and grief.