Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy of novels His Dark Materials has become the next big thing in the world of teenage fiction after the Harry Potter phenomenon.
Over the past four years, since the first book Northern Lights appeared, millions of readers have pleasurably ploughed through Pullman's 1,300-page epic story where a teenage hero and heroine journey into parallel universes, battle against fantastic creatures and take part in the war in heaven to dethrone God. His Dark Materials is a massive adventure involving a vast cast of human and non-human characters and plotlines that travel all over the place.
No one was surprised when the film rights to the trilogy were snapped up. After the great success of The Lord of the Rings, Pullman's marathon trilogy seemed ripe for the cinema screen. It could easily show us witches flying through the air and holes being cut in space to enter another world in the universe. But some eyebrows were raised when the UK's National Theatre in London announced that they were going to present His Dark Materials on stage. Surely the theatre was setting itself an impossible task with this one? But difficult things had been staged there before and now it was time to tackle the impossible.
Nicholas Hytner took over as director of the National Theatre last year and one of the first things he did was look round for a piece of theatre that would be big, difficult and awe-inspiring. He wanted to stun audiences with the power of what theatre could actually do. Hytner soon decided that His Dark Materials was that unique epic that would bring both adults and children flocking to the theatre. But he also knew that this was a high-risk project both from the point of view of adaptation and technical expertise. How could such a complex story be turned into a stage play, leaving Pullman's plot intact? And the technical and acting problems would be enormous.
His Dark Materials includes a daemon, a shape-changing animal that reflects human feelings and moods. How could this be done on the stage? And how could the bizarre worlds where Pullman sets his story be created?
Award-winning playwright Nicholas Wright was given the unenviable task of writing the stage version of His Dark Materials. It was a task that a less talented and imaginative writer would have looked on with horror. Wright was already a fan of the books and spent a year and a half rethinking them as a piece of theatre. He wanted to be as faithful as possible to Pullman's epic, but he knew that his main priority was to retell the story in theatre terms.