Review: The Time Traveller's Wife at Storyhouse ***1/2

Audrey Niffenegger’s unconventional love story of a time travelling librarian and his soulmate has evoked powerful responses from readers since it became an early noughties chart topper.

It’s why the multi-million-selling heart-tugger was brought to the big screen in 2009 and arrived on the small screen earlier this year.

Of course, filmmakers have the benefit of any number of visual, technological and editing tricks at their disposal to realise the complexities of genetically-unique Henry’s random time travelling episodes.

Perhaps those complexities are what have kept the book from the stage – until now that is, with the first theatrical outing for the story coming in musical form in this ambitious world premiere at Chester’s Storyhouse.

It’s a daunting premise to tell the story of Henry and Clare, the titular wife through whose eyes we witness the relationship unfolding haphazardly across time, and to create the constant, fleeting moments of meeting and parting which drive the narrative.

It needs a team effort to pull it off, which is what it gets here.

Designer Anna Fleishcle has created a minimal but versatile set, centred on a pair of rectangular walls on a revolve, on which the rapidly changing scenes are evoked by Andrzej Goulding’s video design.

This then becomes illusionist Chris Fisher’s playground on which to devise a headache-inducing number of ways for Henry (the ever excellent David Hunter) to materalise and vanish in seemingly magical fashion, aided by some nifty choreographed misdirection from the cast.

It’s slickly done – at one point Hunter's Henry suddenly appears sitting, naked, next to a bag lady on a park bench, while the scene at the end of the first act where he is centre stage one minute, then suddenly appears from stage right in (plot spoiler) bloodied clothes, then materialises in the middle of the scene from nowhere again a few seconds later, is particularly intriguing.

Only one strangely hokey moment where he literally has a blanket held in front of him as he ‘vanishes’ grates.

Hunter must be exhausted by the end of the evening. He deserves plaudits for the seamless execution, as does whoever helps facilitate his lightning-fast changes from one outfit to no clothes at all to a completely different piece of clothing in wildly disparate locations off stage.

The risk is always, of course, that the emotional heart of the story is overshadowed by the illusions.

The first half feels, perhaps unsurprisingly given the structure of the source material, quite fragmented, as we only experience brief snatches of the burgeoning friendship and then relationship between Henry and Clare (Joanna Woodward) darting backwards and forwards over the best part of two decades.

She first meets Henry when she is around 10 (which has always lent a certain uncomfortableness to the plot).

Above and top: David Hunter as Henry and Joanna Woodward as Clare in The Time Traveller's Wife. Photos by Ant Clausen

Three young local actresses are sharing the role of the young Clare here in Chester. On the night I saw it, it was Phoebe Cheffings, an impressively self-possessed young performer from just across the Welsh border. She also plays (plot spoiler 2) Henry and adult Clare’s longed for daughter Alba.

There’s more of an opportunity to invest in the tale’s emotional core after the interval where the two settle down into a kind of domestic (non) rhythm, and Woodward seizes the opportunity to show both her character’s inner force and also her vulnerability.

It's credit to Lauren Gunderson, who has adapted the story for the stage, that this Clare feels a less passive presence than she can do in the book. In fact here she’s a veritable force of nature.

Meanwhile Hiba Elchikhe and Tim Mahendran enjoy themselves as her kooky support network Charisse and Gomez.

Dave Stewart and Joss Stone have created a soundtrack of 14 melodic songs which range from bright ensemble numbers to big, melodramatic ballads.

They’re all sung with power and conviction by the cast, although occasionally the delivers borders on shouty. Sometimes less is more. Lyrically, they certainly underscore and support the plot, but can you hum any of them the next morning? I couldn’t.

Bill Buckhurst directs the complicated story with vigour and there’s lively choreography from Shelley Maxwell.

The show’s opening ensemble number, The Story of Love, has the feel of Come From Away about it (that's a compliment by the way), while the second act opener Journeyman, in which Henry tries to explain what time travelling feels like, is a visually and technically exhilarating choreographed fly through scene in the vein of Curious Incident-meets-Frantic Assembly.