Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Artless, crude and thuggish: Bridge Theatre’s Book of Dust reviewed

Plus: Best of Enemies at the Young Vic is more than just a face-off between two supercilious wags – it offers a valuable history lesson too

Spare a thought for the poor old actors who have to wear clip-on origami daemons throughout the run: The Book of Dust at the Bridge Theatre. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge. 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. The chief character, a dim-witted child, wanders around the place and listens while terms like ‘magisterium’, ‘alethiometer’ and ‘daemon’ are explained to him. Meanwhile we’re introduced to Pullman’s range of human personalities. He can do two: first, the ooh-arr yokel who is thick but kind, and secondly, the posh academic who is clever but evil. These archetypes give rise to a total of 32 characters who are represented by 16 actors.

A lot of simplification was needed here. None was effected. The central storyline surrounds the abduction of a screaming infant called Lyra. Another plot involves a power struggle between religious elders. A third strand is set in a boarding school which is so old-fashioned that none of the pupils are transgender. A fourth story takes place at a priory whose priors have been ousted by an invasion of fat, prattling nuns dressed in bedsheets. 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. That’s the plot.

This show would go down well at a prison for illiterates convicted of kidnap, wife-beating or torture

The atmosphere of the script is artless, crude and persistently thuggish. The dialogue brims with feeble polemic and the characters utter banal insults like ‘thicko’, ‘moron’ and ‘scumbag’ which an EastEnders script editor would delete. Few scenes are free of bullying or violence. Someone is always getting their head kicked in. This show would go down well at a prison for illiterates convicted of kidnap, wife-beating or torture.

The many locations of the book are suggested by colourful imagery projected on to ranks of flats that recede to the rear wall.

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