Corden clone pulls the strings for Pullman’s perky puppets
The Book Of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Bridge Theatre, London) Verdict: Pullman on repeat ★★★II
EVERY new adaptation of Philip Pullman’s bestselling novels is greeted with huge excitement by his many fans. How will they capture the author’s adventure, which races through magical worlds and parallel universes? And how will they bring to life the animal daemons, which are a unique expression of each character’s soul?
The 2007 film (starring Nicole Kidman) and subsequent TV series (with Ruth Wilson) had the luxury of computer animation. But Nicholas Hytner, the Bridge’s artistic director, keeps faith with the theatricality of the puppets and projections from his 2003 production of His Dark Materials, back when he was boss at the National.
That starred Anna Maxwell Martin as Pullman’s heroine, Lyra Belacqua: the girl destined to save the world.
Pointedly timed for Christmas, The Book Of Dust is the prelude to Pullman’s supposedly anti-Christian trilogy and is the tale of Lyra’s nativity.
We follow gutsy young Malcolm, the bright, independent-minded son of an innkeeper (more seasonal echoes), tasked with saving Lyra from the Magisterium’s religious Gestapo or ‘CCD’.
Once again, Bob Crowley’s design saturates us in the book’s dark, brooding dystopian nostalgia of a lost Oxford consumed in a Biblical flood (the Almighty may have serious copyright issues with Pullman when he eventually shuffles off this mortal coil).
PROjECTiONs on screens around a stage which thrusts into the auditorium present picture-book graphics, with shimmering trees, seething rivers and wind-swept fens.
As it did at the National, the puppetry stands out, with every actor having their own paper lantern daemon — rather like a personalised Christmas decoration (the main characters have theirs operated by puppeteers wearing woolly hats and dungarees).
But Hytner also toys with scale, as when Malcolm’s tiny canoe (La Belle sauvage of the title) is caught in floods and he’s rescued by Lyra’s father, Lord Asriel, in his miniature ‘gyro-copter’.
Pulling all this together is quite an achievement, but it comes at a cost. We’re left with a frenetic performance, fearful of stopping to reflect. There is certainly little prospect of taking time to ponder Pullman’s gnomic revelation that ‘dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself’.
The characters in Bryony Lavery’s Famous Five-ish adaptation feel like puppets of the plot. With Pullman setting up simplistic conflicts between religion and science, the men of the Magisterium (including a reptilian Nick sampson) are merely straw Nazis.
At least the warm-hearted nuns who hide baby Lyra get more colour — including Dearbhla Molloy as the sort of lyrical irish nun everyone likes to believe in.
A real-life, gasp-inducing baby is interchanged with a doll for Lyra, to raise the sometimes faltering stakes.
But the standout performance is from newcomer samuel Creasey as our hero Malcolm. just out of drama college, he is james Corden, Mark ii: a stout, cheeky youth who turns the otherwise earnest Malcolm into a loveable clown.
As his gobby accomplice Alice, Ella Dacres is notable for her excoriating tongue, including one line worthy of a Glaswegian navvy: ‘The CCD are here with a stuck-up b **** and the nuns are s **** ing themselves.’
The ‘stuck-up b **** in question is Lyra’s wicked mother, Marisa Coulter (Ayesha Dharker), who has been transformed into a Priti Patel lookalike — her officious character even gets to invoke ‘emergency powers’. Could sir Nicholas be making a point?
inevitably, there is solemn reference to climate change and even workplace sexism.
The latter reaches its queasy apotheosis in Pip Carter’s paedophile scientist Gerard Bonneville, who preys on Alice and tries to kiss her. Yuck! some parents may prefer not to expose their children to this.
Elsewhere, i struggled to share Malcolm’s faith in john Light’s slightly drawn Lord Asriel. We must assume Light hopes for a bigger role in the next instalment.
But my main problem is that neither Pullman’s story, nor Hytner’s production, feel as though they are covering any new ground.
isn’t this yarn — about a child messiah, hunted by the authorities — basically a re-run of His Dark Materials?
Haven’t we all been here before . . . and got the alethiometer?