His Dark Materials, part 1 -- Olivier Theatre
Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthFirst thing: it's very long ... Last night's performance ran from just after 7:30 until just before 11pm, with a delay after the interval that might have been the last gasp of the technical problems that led to the cancellation of last week's performances.
This review contains some spoilers for the books, though I have tried to avoid too much detail about the play.
The play may be too long, in fact. My attention was flagging by the end. It's a faithful adaptation with few omissions, and that makes for frequent scene changes and occasionally-confusing dialogue, as the characters expose plot and sub-plot. Having read the books (though not for a while) I found the first half very clear – in places, clearer than the books – and the second half slightly less so. I'm still trying to work out the parts that could have been cut without affecting other scenes ... but I do believe that a degree of simplification and abridgement is not only forgivable, but essential, when dramatising such an ambitious work as this. Either that, or the action should have been spread over three (rather than two) evenings. It's good enough for Peter Jackson...
The production looks wonderful. There are bright, bright stars on the backdrop; the daemons' eyes shine just like an animal's eyes at night; the aurora is suitably eerie. However, I don't really expect to be able to see the edges of effects, and the backstage machinery, from seats halfway back in the circle. And – rather like Miss Saigon, where the people in the cheap seats only get to see the statue's feet – there was a point at which we couldn't really see the key element of the scene.
The daemons are more effective than I'd expected, and I had little difficulty in suspending my disbelief enough to be able to ignore the mechanics of them. The panzerbjorne were less convincing, though someone had been watching the way that polar bears move, the curve of spine and neck. The sheer physical strength came across pretty well, though.
I'm not surprised they had problems with the set. Within the Olivier's standard two-band revolving stage there is a drum that is raised and lowered to provide interiors, a terrace café, the hold of a ship. And there are at least two video areas to provide backdrops and scene-setting. Plenty of room for error, and for distracting the audience with movement and the 'fade' effect that comes from continuing the action as the set revolves to hide it.
The cast is impressive, with some famous names (Timothy Dalton surprisingly dynamic as Lord Asriel, Patricia Hodge deadly as Mrs Coulter, Niamh Cusack – with strong Irish accent – as Serafina Pekkala). A lot of the actors handle multiple roles. I'm not sure whether there's some subtext here about different characters within the novels playing the same role in the narrative at different points, or whether it's sheer practicality. Maybe I should get more sleep.
Especially worthy of note is Anna Maxwell Martin – whose name seems familiar, but I don't know from where – who plays Lyra very convincingly as a brattish 12-year-old. I liked her better than book-Lyra, but she's still belligerent and rude. Her body language is as good as the rest of her performance. And she's on stage all, or almost all, the time: this dramatisation is very much from Lyra's point of view. Will's reminiscences are entirely verbal, recounted to Lyra as they talk together under the tree: Lyra's are presented as live action.
There were a lot of children in the audience, and the production is being recommended for '12 and over' (though some of the audience were surely younger) as an alternative to traditional pantomime. Of course there are similarities (talking animals, wise old men, a wicked mother) but – quite aside from the weightier theological elements of the plot – this is not an especially child-friendly production. Few easy laughs, no actual jokes, and an excerpt from Milton's Paradise Lost. The production pulls few punches. There were parts which disturbed me (which is as it should be, I hasten to add: Pullman's books are not gentle, happy fantasies). Someone told me recently that what makes Kill Bill Volume 1 violent is the sound effects, in particular the sound of breaking bone. You have been warned. But, in fact, Lyra's anguish when Pantalaimon is threatened is as harrowing as the physical violence elsewhere in the production.
Pullman was closely involved in the dramatisation of his novels, and he already had considerable theatrical experience. It was probably he who chose to open the play with Will and Lyra talking, looking back ... and almost certainly his idea to end this first of two instalments with quite such a cliff-hanger. We're seeing the second half next week; I don't envy anyone who has a long wait. Yes, it is all in the books; but that's not the same thing at all.
One-word executive summary: overambitious.
Thanks to Bill Gates for forcing me to reword most of the second half of this. How boring if autosave worked ...
This review contains some spoilers for the books, though I have tried to avoid too much detail about the play.
The play may be too long, in fact. My attention was flagging by the end. It's a faithful adaptation with few omissions, and that makes for frequent scene changes and occasionally-confusing dialogue, as the characters expose plot and sub-plot. Having read the books (though not for a while) I found the first half very clear – in places, clearer than the books – and the second half slightly less so. I'm still trying to work out the parts that could have been cut without affecting other scenes ... but I do believe that a degree of simplification and abridgement is not only forgivable, but essential, when dramatising such an ambitious work as this. Either that, or the action should have been spread over three (rather than two) evenings. It's good enough for Peter Jackson...
The production looks wonderful. There are bright, bright stars on the backdrop; the daemons' eyes shine just like an animal's eyes at night; the aurora is suitably eerie. However, I don't really expect to be able to see the edges of effects, and the backstage machinery, from seats halfway back in the circle. And – rather like Miss Saigon, where the people in the cheap seats only get to see the statue's feet – there was a point at which we couldn't really see the key element of the scene.
The daemons are more effective than I'd expected, and I had little difficulty in suspending my disbelief enough to be able to ignore the mechanics of them. The panzerbjorne were less convincing, though someone had been watching the way that polar bears move, the curve of spine and neck. The sheer physical strength came across pretty well, though.
I'm not surprised they had problems with the set. Within the Olivier's standard two-band revolving stage there is a drum that is raised and lowered to provide interiors, a terrace café, the hold of a ship. And there are at least two video areas to provide backdrops and scene-setting. Plenty of room for error, and for distracting the audience with movement and the 'fade' effect that comes from continuing the action as the set revolves to hide it.
The cast is impressive, with some famous names (Timothy Dalton surprisingly dynamic as Lord Asriel, Patricia Hodge deadly as Mrs Coulter, Niamh Cusack – with strong Irish accent – as Serafina Pekkala). A lot of the actors handle multiple roles. I'm not sure whether there's some subtext here about different characters within the novels playing the same role in the narrative at different points, or whether it's sheer practicality. Maybe I should get more sleep.
Especially worthy of note is Anna Maxwell Martin – whose name seems familiar, but I don't know from where – who plays Lyra very convincingly as a brattish 12-year-old. I liked her better than book-Lyra, but she's still belligerent and rude. Her body language is as good as the rest of her performance. And she's on stage all, or almost all, the time: this dramatisation is very much from Lyra's point of view. Will's reminiscences are entirely verbal, recounted to Lyra as they talk together under the tree: Lyra's are presented as live action.
There were a lot of children in the audience, and the production is being recommended for '12 and over' (though some of the audience were surely younger) as an alternative to traditional pantomime. Of course there are similarities (talking animals, wise old men, a wicked mother) but – quite aside from the weightier theological elements of the plot – this is not an especially child-friendly production. Few easy laughs, no actual jokes, and an excerpt from Milton's Paradise Lost. The production pulls few punches. There were parts which disturbed me (which is as it should be, I hasten to add: Pullman's books are not gentle, happy fantasies). Someone told me recently that what makes Kill Bill Volume 1 violent is the sound effects, in particular the sound of breaking bone. You have been warned. But, in fact, Lyra's anguish when Pantalaimon is threatened is as harrowing as the physical violence elsewhere in the production.
Pullman was closely involved in the dramatisation of his novels, and he already had considerable theatrical experience. It was probably he who chose to open the play with Will and Lyra talking, looking back ... and almost certainly his idea to end this first of two instalments with quite such a cliff-hanger. We're seeing the second half next week; I don't envy anyone who has a long wait. Yes, it is all in the books; but that's not the same thing at all.
One-word executive summary: overambitious.
Thanks to Bill Gates for forcing me to reword most of the second half of this. How boring if autosave worked ...
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Date: Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 02:11 am (UTC)I expect the play might get shorter. My experience is that the first few runs of a play take much longer than when it's bedded in. (Of course you wouldn't expect the NT to open before they'd got it completely right - but in this case, it sounds like they've had to?)
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Date: Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 02:34 am (UTC)And, of course, I first read that as "Thanks to Bill Oddie."
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Date: Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, December 10th, 2003 01:49 pm (UTC)