We wish you a very creepy Christmas
The Book Of Dust – La Belle Sauvage is far from dry as dust. In fact, the rain almost drowns the spires of Oxford in this adaptation of Philip Pullman’s 2017 deluge novel. The story is of two bickering kids who work in an Oxfordshire pub. Their mission is to save a newborn baby from the clutches of the Magisterium, a creepy medieval-style Catholic theocracy that wants to kill the infant and reassert its earthly power.
The kids’ getaway vehicle is a canoe. The baby is called Lyra, star of the His Dark Materials trilogy, to which this is the prequel. And what exactly is this mysterious cosmic dust? Adapter Bryony Lavery wisely leaves the question moot. Everyone is upstaged by Lyra, a real baby girl (there’s a roster of them for the run) who gets cuddled by the cast to coos and aaaahs of delight from the audience.
The dark, watery, visual projections are gorgeous and Nicholas Hytner’s direction keeps the momentum going. He includes a drone gyrocopter – a witty miniature of the helicopter from his long-running hit Miss Saigon.
But Pullman’s hatred of Christianity feels misplaced in what is in effect a Christmas show. As for the animal daemons – every actor has one – they are disappointing, lit-up novelty paper jobs.
It is easy, though, to root for the two young leads – Ella Dacres as the bolshie Alice and Samuel Creasey as her loud companion Malcolm. They bond as they are chased downstream by a religious Gestapo and Ayesha Dharker’s suavely evil Mrs Coulter in spiked heels. Pip Carter plays the child torturer Bonneville (these unfortunately topical scenes leave a rather bad taste), with John Light as the undependable Lord Asriel. A must-see for fans of the books. But I found it a mixed evening.
In Best Of Enemies, James Graham stages the 1968 series of ABC News debates between two commentators, Gore Vidal, the Lefty gay Democrat writer, and the even snootier William Buckley Jnr, intellectual darling of the Republican right. They loathed each other. Vidal at one point called Buckley a Nazi. Buckley lost it and retorted: ‘You queer.’ Ratings went through the roof.
The bizarre casting decision to have a black actor (Homeland’s excellent David Harewood) playing the white neocon Buckley feels as if the theatre has taken revenge on the bloke. Charles Edwards plays the caustic Vidal. Both actors’ impressions are slightly off, as is clear if you’ve seen the Oscar-nominated 2015 documentary of the same title that inspired this show.
The cast is populated out with news executives, Chicago’s vulgarian Mayor Daley, Mrs Buckley, Vidal’s boyfriend and assorted 1960s icons, including James Baldwin, Andy Warhol and even Enoch Powell.
A play about television’s role in our political culture, with feisty studio scenes, but this staged version rambles when the cameras aren’t rolling.