Bedknobs and Broomsticks: Scottish duo to bring Disney classic to the stage

Dianne Pilkington in Bedknobs and Broomsticks PIC: Johan Persson

You will know them as the masterminds behind some of Scotland's most adventurous theatre productions. For the National Theatre of Scotland, they staged the wordless family show Dragon, a sustained 90 minutes of visual invention presented with the seamlessness of a dream.

That show also played at the Edinburgh International Festival, as did Flight, a production so unusual it was hard to know if you should call it theatre at all. For this one, the audience peered into a giant rotating cylinder as three-dimensional vignettes showing a refugee's trek across Europe passed before their eyes. Whatever it was, it was a stunning achievement.

Their names are Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison and they are the masterminds behind Glasgow's Vox Motus. Small though their company may be, they have not gone unnoticed. On the contrary, they have been spotted by one of the biggest players in the business.

No less an organisation than Disney has entrusted them with bringing one of its most loved movies to the stage for the first time anywhere in the world. To be co-directors of Bedknobs and Broomsticks is quite a feat for a company that operates out of a room in Glasgow's Citizens Theatre.

"It's been a long time coming," says Harrison who was recruited by director John Tiffany to create the stage illusions in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London's West End. "We've been working on several projects of this scale for several years but this is the first one to make it to the stage, which is very exciting."

Harrison's credits also include work on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the West End and Pinocchio at the Royal National Theatre, but his involvement with Bedknobs and Broomsticks says a lot about Disney's attitude to theatre. Just as it turned to puppeteer Julie Taymor to bring The Lion King to Broadway, recognising she knew far more about the job than a movie company ever could, so it has entrusted the 1971 fantasy favourite to Edmunds and Harrison, directors who know their craft.

"They wanted the title to be put in the hands of people who were going to do something slightly different," says Harrison. "For us it was the perfect match. It fits the type of story we were looking for and it allows us as a creative partnership to run riot. It's full of opportunities to be inventive with the staging and to bring magic to life. How can we make a bed fly across a large landscape? How can you make a witch turn somebody into a rabbit? It's really exciting."

Edmunds says their years of touring Scotland made them unfazed by taking on a show of this scale. Many directors who want to use a lot of special effects would prefer to stay in one theatre where they can remain in control of the environment. But not these two.

"We grew up as a touring company," she says. "When this project was put forward and a national tour was part of the package, we thought, 'We absolutely know how to do that.' We're not thinking about adapting a sit-down production for a tour, we've always thought about how the really tricksy stuff can work everywhere we play."

As well as his time on the road, Harrison also learnt a lot from working on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. "At the core of Harry Potter is the human being," says the director, who developed his magic skills in hospital recuperating from a leg injury when he was only nine. "What I learnt was that magic really works if it's part of the personality of the character who is performing it. That's what any good, artistic magician would do. We wanted Bedknobs and Broomsticks to feel charming with a sense of childhood imagination, but at the same time be allowed to take flight."

Set in the second world war, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is about three children evacuated from London to a fictional Dorset town. There, they are put in the care of the eccentric Miss Eglantine Price – played by Angela Lansbury on screen – who is less interested in looking after them than in completing her studies in magic.

Edmunds says the fantasy emerges from the stress of the poor children who were evacuated during the war and, after 18 months of lockdown, today's children have gone through similar privations. "Using fantasy to bring respite from trauma is really timely," she says. "It feels more than ever we want something to lift us out of our situation. The children are in the depths of a traumatic upheaval and fantasy helps to offer relief from all the dark forces closing in around them. It's very cleverly written to show the way a small child would imagine solutions to problems."

Moving from film to stage always involves changes and, here, the directors have tried to match the inventiveness of the original with their own leaps of imagination. "We're honouring the film in the sense that we studied it and we watched it together," says Harrison. "We've pored over it, pulled it apart and put it back together again. The audience will get a lot of the iconic moments they have come to love. We have enhanced some of the story beats and moved things around in different directions so people will find themselves having an emotionally powerful journey about belonging, commitment and family."

Bedknobs and Broomsticks, King's Theatre, Glasgow, 2-7 November; His Majesty's, Aberdeen, 17-21 November; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 19-23 January

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