The many locations of the book are suggested by colourful imagery projected on to ranks of flats that recede to the rear wall. The trans butcher and the disaster of the SNP’s self-ID This show would go down well at a prison for illiterates convicted of kidnap, wife-beating or torture. Someone is always getting their head kicked in. Few scenes are free of bullying or violence. The dialogue brims with feeble polemic and the characters utter banal insults like ‘thicko’, ‘moron’ and ‘scumbag’ which an EastEnders script editor would delete. The atmosphere of the script is artless, crude and persistently thuggish. This show would go down well at a prison for illiterates convicted of kidnap, wife-beating or torture And intermittently we meet an upper-class rapist, called Gerard, who has recently left jail and seems hellbent on sexually abusing an angry teenage babysitter. A fourth story takes place at a priory whose priors have been ousted by an invasion of fat, prattling nuns dressed in bedsheets. A third strand is set in a boarding school which is so old-fashioned that none of the pupils are transgender. Another plot involves a power struggle between religious elders. The central storyline surrounds the abduction of a screaming infant called Lyra. These archetypes give rise to a total of 32 characters who are represented by 16 actors.Ī lot of simplification was needed here.

He can do two: first, the ooh-arr yokel who is thick but kind, and secondly, the posh academic who is clever but evil. Meanwhile we’re introduced to Pullman’s range of human personalities.

The chief character, a dim-witted child, wanders around the place and listens while terms like ‘magisterium’, ‘alethiometer’ and ‘daemon’ are explained to him. The yarn is set in Oxford, and the surrounding countryside, and the whole of the first act is devoted to exposition because Pullman’s fantasy world is impenetrably complicated. Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge.

Book of dust bridge theatre