Since the final instalment was published in 2000 Philip Pullman’s fantasy adventure for young people has been a phenomenon, not only in bookshops but on the stage of the National Theatre, where this adaptation by Nicholas Wright was first staged in 2003.
In taking on its first professional revival the Rep has enjoyed an instant hit, with house full notices and an extension to the run even before it began.
But that doesn’t mean this kind of fantasy is everyone’s cup of tea, and I have to confess it isn’t mine.
Having found the spell of Narnia elusive and been too bored by The Hobbit to even attempt The Lord of the Rings, Pullman’s repertoire of witches, angels and magic knives strikes me as having a hand-me-down feel which is only accentuated by the inevitable simplifications of the stage version.
Pullman’s chief model, however, is Paradise Lost, and it eventually becomes clear that Lord Asriel, the free-spirited adventurer who pursues parallel worlds in defiance of a repressive Church, is planning a re-run of Satan’s rebellion.
The fundamental conflict is between those who wish to keep mankind in its religiously-prescribed place and those who want to set its creative instincts free, and there is no doubt which side Pullman is on.
Asriel’s daughter Lyra, brought up in a cloistered, orphaned environment in an Oxford college, is another free spirit who is unaware that her destiny is to regenerate the world through original sin – if the church does not succeed in hunting her down first.
Despite a total running time that comes in at just under six hours, it is a breathless scramble to squeeze in the bare events of the plot. Even so, the journey to the North in the first book, Northern Lights, is radically simplified while much of the psychological underpinning is thrown overboard en route.
So the show is essentially a rapid sequence of events, some of which work better than others.
As well as a winning performance by Amy McAllister in the central role of Lyra, one of its obvious successes is the puppetry by Blind Summit which supplies the “daemons” – souls in visible animal form – which accompany human beings in the invented world where most of the action takes place.
Unfortunately, albeit for obvious practical reasons, not every character who should have a daemon is actually given one. This is potentially confusing when so much of the story hinges on their absolute interdependence.
Far less successful than the puppets are the irritating camp angels and the wretched witches who “fly” back and forth on anchored ladders.
Overall, director Rachael Kavanaugh and her creative team do not create a sufficiently compelling theatrical spectacle to redeem this overrated hokum.
In Part 2 Lyra finds her way to an underworld populated by grey-clad, zombie-like dead souls whom she releases into the upper world.
As I was finally released from the Rep I knew exactly how they felt.
* Running time: (Part 1) Three hours (Part 2) Two hours, 55 minutes. Until April 18.
