LeafbyNigglePhoto1CreditBrianHartley

4 May 2016 The Guardian

Leaf by Niggle

By JRR Tolkien. A Puppet State review.

AT THE start of his enchanting one-man show, actor Richard Medrington recommends we think of Leaf by Niggle as “less like a parable and more like a painting”. That being the case, perhaps we shouldn’t dwell on how much JRR Tolkien’s fairy story, published in 1945, feels like a Christian redemption allegory.We should maybe call it coincidence that, at the end of his productive life, the “little man called Niggle” finds himself in a Kafkaesque purgatory of endless menial labour before escaping to an elysian idyll, as if he were en route to heaven. And maybe it’s not relevant to note that, having acquired some self-knowledge, Niggle departs in the company of a shepherd who has offered to guide him on his final journey.

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