★★★☆☆
It’s not an obvious choice for the festive season. Then again, if Philip Pullman has never made a secret of his distrust of organised religion, he can still count Rowan Williams and Richard Coles among his clerical admirers. And given that Nicholas Hytner directed the National Theatre’s adaptation of His Dark Materials, it makes sense for him to bring the gothic fantasy to his fiefdom.
Not that there’s quite so much for the theologically minded to get their teeth into this time. Casting back to the first months of Pullman’s heroine, Lyra, this is a more straightforward adventure, focusing on the efforts of her schoolboy guardian, Malcolm, to keep her from falling into the hands of the theocrats who run a police state in a homely parallel universe.
At this point, you’d need several pages of exegesis to get to grips with the back story and the cosmic property of Pullman’s “dust”. Suffice to say that most fans of the book should be happy with Bryony Lavery’s adaptation. Neutrals will be scratching their heads over the plot twists but can at least enjoy Samuel Creasey’s exuberant, James Corden-ish performance as Malcolm, a cheeky pot boy in a Thames-side pub who has to display all the quick wits of a superhero to stay one step ahead of the forces of darkness.
The breathless chase from one location to another is a little like Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables with a river instead of sewers.
Advertisement
There are two other stars. One is baby Lyra herself, touchingly portrayed by a combination of a real infant (Adiyah Ijaha in this performance) and a puppet. There were times when I honestly wasn’t sure which was which. The other luminary is the video designer Luke Halls, who creates a stylised series of bucolic images on Bob Crowley’s uncluttered set, helped by Jon Clark’s ethereal lighting. When Malcolm’s canoe, La Belle Sauvage, sets sail through a flooded Oxfordshire landscape you can almost smell the murky water.
Barnaby Dixon’s puppets depict the pet-like daemons — guardian angel-type figures — who accompany the humans. The thrust stage gets crowded at times, puppeteers mingling with the actors. It’s the human factor that’s a source of dramatic weakness. Malcolm’s relationship with his acerbic companion Alice (Ella Dacres) builds haphazardly, while Ayesha Dharker makes the best of the sketchily drawn chief villain: Lyra’s mother, Marisa Coulter.
Be warned: this is not a show for young children. The dissolute Gerard Bonneville (stylishly played by Pip Carter) is unabashed about his desire to seduce young Alice. Pullman and Lavery bring us face to face with a banal kind of evil.
To Feb 26, bridgetheatre.co.uk