NIALL MCKEEVER

Director: Cameron Menzies

Choreographer: Jennifer Rooney

Set and Costume Designer: Niall McKeever  

Lighting Designer: Kevin Treacy

★★★★★ OPERA NOW

★★★★★ MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW

Capturing that sense of movement is scenographer Niall McKeever’s fabulous set. Dominating the stage of the Lyric is the enormous fractal vortex that pulls you into the show – like you’re being compelled through a dark forest path or swallowed down the belly of a wolf. It also mirrors the turbulent thoughts circling the minds of these ever-troubled characters

Kudos too to McKeever for the costume design, which somehow manages to encompass everything from greasy denim and kitchen-sink realism to Highland dress and Arthur Rackham’s book of Irish Fairy Tales'

★★★★ THE STAGE

'The lights dim and the mist clears to reveal a towering wooden vortex, which will suck into its forbidding heart a jigsaw of human dreams, quests and ambitions'

★★★★ THE TIMES

'It’s staged in and around a stunning set by Niall McKeever: logs and ladders criss-crossing high above two staircases to form receding rings, as if leading deep into the subconscious. It suggests that the “woods” of the title aren’t only a place where dangerous urges come to the fore, but also a moral maze where (unlike in the original fairytales) the characters are confronted with the often disastrous consequences of what they wish for'