It was like Lord of the Rings (the movie) done on a slack budget with Salvation Army costumes. Actually the production values didn’t distress me (as they did my companion). My “suspension of disbelief” sufficiently covered the bare bones, and stitched a fantastical sci-fi-type tapestry. But the play was excruciatingly boring (my companion said “juvenile”). Searching for a magical key, people dying only to be miraculously brought back to life, occasional spicings of camp humor (a hallmark of the company not Gaiman I presume), all in a stupid plotline, was insufficient to carry the tawdry effects.
Over the years I’ve heard such good things about Gaiman, but if this is reflective of his work, it’s not to my liking. Somebody said that the company has lost future rights to the book, so presumably it will come out as a film in due time. The production already felt horribly cliched (drawing on popular cinema) so the material is probably ripe for Hollywood. But writing that is done with an eye to film adaptation is not always the best sort qua writing, however remunerative it is for the author. I don’t know if that's Gaiman’s flaw, or if his worldview is simply a media-saturated one initially.
Pop culture has its place. But this reminded me of nothing so much as of a childhood production some neighborhood boys and I put on of Dracula using their father-built sandbox as a coffin. I suppose our mothers liked the performance well enough, but you have to suspect maternal indulgence.
[Edit: Gaiman’s book is an adaptation of and expansion on a BBC television series of the same name, dating from the 1990s, which I had not known. “It was innovative for the time. It had an interesting concept, but the budget for it never allowed for a very deep exploration of the concept” writes a friend on Facebook.]