Beyond the Book

Readers who know and love His Dark Materials and subsequently choose to become audiences will bring with them into the theatre a different set of expectations from those they might apply to a new play by an unfamiliar dramatist. Inevitably they will compare the adaptation with the novel and the question of fidelity will loom large.

Was the spirit of the original book communicated or distorted, and were the author’s intentions violated or respected? Nicholas Wright explains the kinds of challenge he faced and the changes he has made in adapting the novels for the stage.

In the Alethiometer scene in Productions you can hear Philip Pullman read from the original manuscript, and watch Anna Maxwell Martin rehearsing the scene.

Sometimes the demands of the theatre mean Nicholas Wright has felt it necessary to transform whole scenes such as that in which Will meets Iorek. Compare that with Philip Pullman talking about the same scene in novel as drama.

The text underwent many changes during the pre-rehearsal period and during the rehearsals themselves. Even during the public previews subtle changes were still being made.

Nicholas Wright has an answer for any Pullman fans who continue to harbour doubts about the wisdom of adapting the works for the stage. These are new works, he says, to be judged in their own right.