Will ignores the angels; with the help of a local girl named Ama, the Bear King Iorek Byrnison, and Lord Asriel's Gallivespian spies, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia, he rescues Lyra from the cave where her mother has hidden her from the Magisterium, which has become determined to kill her before she yields to temptation and sin like the original Eve. The beginning of Part One suffers from information overkill - facts and names thrown out like javelins - but get past this and things quickly improve. Adapted with love and precision by Nicholas Wright who has been daring enough to make the judicious cuts necessary to create a workable piece of theatre out of the at-times-sprawling works of literature that form Pullman’s trilogy, the story that is told here is strong and cohesive and told with a sensitive clarity (although I can’t be sure how clear it actually is to anyone who hasn’t read the novels, truth be told).

They encounter fantastical creatures in parallel worlds-rebellious angels, soul-eating spectres, child-catching Gobblers and the armoured bears and witch-clans of the Archtic.The success of the show brings a second run, with a new cast and some amendments of the script, from December 2004 to April 2, 2005. As the play is unlike anything we have ever done before, I decided to try something different at Auditions. The play was since then played many times in the UK, involving professionnal or amateurs and youth cast and crews. There is much to admire in the staging; yet the result, inevitably, is like a clipped hedge compared to Pullman's forest.

Although the original play has a five hour running time and spans 27 locations and numerous worlds, Mrs Bradley and Miss Satterthwaite have given us the more manageable ’His Dark Materials’ Part One. This was great as it meant people (particularly those new to the company) didn't feel put on the spot, allowing them to try out all the ideas. Partly, it's a problem of scale: Pullman's 1,300 pages have to be condensed to manageable proportions. Philip Pullman himself stated that the play was "the best adaptation there could ever have been" of his novels.His stage work includes Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Henry IV, Love's Labour's Lost and most recently in the West End Anthony and Cleopatra and Taming of the Shrew. Cynthia Grenier, in the Catholic Culture, said: "In the world of Pullman, God Himself (the Authority) is a merciless tyrant.

Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist, [13] the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title. This adaptation by Nicholas Wright was such a hit at the National Theatre, that it was given a second run. The sound controls we have in place for this production go way beyond the usual cross-fade and will include a number of electronic processing devices to help augment the action.Her snow-goose dæmon Kaisa, like all witches' dæmons, can travel much farther apart from her than the dæmons of humans, without feeling the pain of separation.