Bridge Theatre | ★★★★✩

Author Philip Pullman likes to think of this chapter in his hugely popular fantasy series not as a prequel but an “equal”. Whatever he calls it this section is set 10 years before His Dark Materials the epic that was so triumphantly staged by Nicholas Hytner in two parts when he was artistic director of the National Theatre.
Here the heroine of that story Lyra is but a baby, played in an affront to the never-work-with-children-and-animals edict by a real live cooing infant eliciting “ahs” and “aws” from the audience and who never for a moment seemed fazed.
“Played” on this night by the sub-one year old Adiya Ijaha this Lyra is the subject of a prophecy who the evil Magisterium and the dastardly Church must capture or kill if they are to avert their demise.
As before this world is set largely in a recognisable yet different version of “Brytain”. Every person has their own daemon — an animalistic manifestation of their human character. And as with the previous each is a delicately constructed puppet who in turn is controlled and voiced by their own dark-suited puppetmaster.
The most terrifying of these belongs to the dashing and heroic scientist Gerard Bonneville (Pip Carter) who seems to be just the kind of chap one can get behind as he searched for the truth about “dust” — the stuff that makes us and the universe. But then his daemon appears — a great sniggering hyena.
Yet the focus is on the antagonistic relationship between 12-year-old Malcolm (Samuel Creasey), the son to a country pub landlady, and pot cleaner Alice (Ella Dacres) who form a reluctant alliance to protect the baby from forces of actually really chilling evil as the plot makes its rollocking progress. Locations switch seamlessly between the country to the city, the rain is torrential and there are tsunami-like floods that have the power to destroy stone buildings. At his Bridge Theatre Hytner no longer has facilities offered by the National’s great Olivier stage. But he does have the stage and video design talents of (respectively) Bob Crowley and Luke Halls. On silently sliding screens and on the thrust of the stage Halls uses every surface as a canvas on which to project breathtaking animated visuals of scenery and apocalyptic flood.
Meanwhile Bryony Lavery’s incredibly concise adaptation crams a quart of narrative into a pint of time which under Hytner’s direction passes without the story losing its grip for a single second. There are however one or two moments that raise an inward “huh?”, such as when a betrayer conveniently hangs around until those he has betrayed can beat him up and discover where their chase must take them next. When Bonneville dwells on stories of rape and torture the desriptions feel gratuitous, even for adults.
The corruption of this Brytain’s judiciary resonates with government plans in another Britain to subvert the power of judges. And in all this Dacres and Creasey are a superb double act. Together they are the heart of an astonishing piece of storytelling.