Max Porter’s Lanny adapted for stage at Bristol Old Vic

Max Porter’s rural noir novel Lanny arrives on the stage at the Bristol Old Vic in an adaptation running until 7 November, bringing an ancient pagan myth and a missing-child mystery into the West Country. The production weaves village gossip, modern anxieties, and the presence of a mythical green man into a theatrical experience that some have described as combining elements of Tales of the Unexpected meets Jackanory and The Missing meets This Country meets Stranger Things.

Directed by Nancy Medina and adapted by Bea Roberts, the stage version relocates the spectral story from commuting distance to London to commuting distance to Bristol. The narrative centers on townie couple Robert, played by Raj Bajaj, and Jolie, played by Hanora Kamen, as they settle into an English village only for their otherworldly son, Lanny—played on press night by Atlas Johnson-Dutfield—to disappear. Richard Cant plays a local artist dubbed Mad Pete who had befriended Lanny and is now considered prime suspect.

Designing The Haunted Rural World At Bristol Old Vic

The production relies heavily on Rebecca Jane Wood’s haunted set design, which incorporates the village and surrounding woodland using screens that display scratchy images of bare-branched trees and antler-figured silhouettes. Lighting designer Zeynep Kepekli contrasts warm and cold tones to capture the chilling atmosphere of Dead Papa Toothwort, the ancient pagan figure who looms over the proceedings. The book’s multi-voiced village portrait and satirical observations of country life are mirrored on stage through disembodied audio and floating sentences written across the set.

Building The Sonic Landscape In The Mendip Hills

To capture the auditory world of Max Porter’s novel, sound designers Elena Peña and Dave Price alongside composer Dom Coyote ventured into the Mendip Hills near Bristol to record natural audio for the production. The team recorded audio using contact microphones pressed against tree trunks to build a trip-hop-inspired soundscape that replaces electronic beats with the sounds of the natural world. Coyote adapted a folk song to the tune of Sumer Is Icumen In to accompany the ancient woodland figure, noting that Dead Papa Toothwort lives outside the human arrow of time.