As a Christmas show, it’s a puzzling choice, particularly given the author’s anti-religious sentiments, and it doesn’t really justify its transfer to this new medium. But it should certainly satisfy the Pullman faithful until the next of his books hits our shelves.
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Good pace, clever scenery projections, an adorable baby and . . . a plot of pure tommyrot: Nick Hytner’s return to Philip Pullman’s fiction is fun to watch but intellectually little more nourishing than cornflakes.
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I suspect kids taken to see this show will gulp down its copious pleasures and skim over the difficult, grown-up bits. I left it, as I often do with Pullman’s work, simultaneously elated and deflated, exhausted from chasing one narrative high after another.
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What is more remarkable is the production’s ability to keep closely to Pullman’s earth-bound and realistic brand of fantasy...Here is the ultimate Christmas show – with sacrilegious twists.
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I would take older children or fans to see this and be confident they’d find something to enjoy and to argue about afterwards. But it’s no ‘War Horse’, and certainly no ‘Northern Lights’.
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