Re: A poll: US versions vs. UK versions?
Posted by: Anonymous User (---.dsl.pipex.com)
Date: July 25, 2004 03:37PM
Hi.. sorry - haven't checked into this forum for a little while.
the plays were awesome. really really fantastic. I was dubious before hand, especially as Will and Lyra were played by adults, but I found it superb, and everyone else I know who went found it superb. It was worth it just for the programme!!!
There were alot of changes from the book.. no Mary Malone for a start, but it was all very cleverly done so you didn't miss her at all (Think the Muleffa would have been just too hard to do on stage). And the casting was perfect - Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel was perfect, Patricia Hodge and Mrs Coulter was perfect, and Niamh Cusack made a (wait for it..) Perfect Serafine Pekkala!
I also couldn't see how they were going to work the deamons.. and the first 5 minutes of the play I still thought that. But suddenly I believed in them!
I cried just as much at the end as I did when the first I read the books!!
Oh, and the stage has to be seen to be believed. My husband has worked in theatre and even he was blown away by the staging. a 3 story corkscrew kind of affair, so there were about 6 different stages in total.. hard to explain, but very very clever! (It's in the Olivier Theatre, so if you've been there before you'll have an idea of what I mean by the cork screw stage!)
Its on again (At the National Theatre) starting this November, so if you have a chance to see it, DO!
And get a t-shirt.. They have the wood cuts that Pullman did on them.. and are very good sizes (they go up to a size 20 for females which I was very impressed with)
I'm currently yearning after the 80 CD set of Pullman reading the entire trilogy!