Review: Carrie’s War

There is such a thing as being too faithful to the book. This adaptation of Nina Bawden’s children’s classic about Carrie’s adventure as a wartime evacuee in spooky Wales allows for delicious Welsh accents — except that of an almost inaudible Prunella Scales as the dying Mrs Gotobed — to adorn a West End stage.

Bawden’s story, in which Carrie and her little brother get caught up in the sibling estrangement of their adult hosts, is deeply satisfying in a childhood innocence versus adult cynicism kind of way. But there is no reason to see this play instead of read the book. Emma Reeves’s adaptation is an all-too literal transposition and Andrew Loudon’s production brings little theatrical imagination to the story and its characters other than a very basic colouring in.