Part 1 was really good! Longer than I realized (though it didn't drag on), it was 3 hours so in total with part 2 on Sunday, it will be 6 hours long! That seemed to keep the very little children away, the kids there were mostly 12+ and we weren't the only adults there without children. Not that I have anything against kids but Steve and I once went to a comedy show and I swear we were the only ones there under 60 (it was a comedy based on an old TV show) and I felt really awkward. Didn't want the same thing to happen with kids.
Anyway, I was curious to see how they dealt with the daemons on stage. They had some uniquely styled puppets and at first I was a little put off by how they made no attempt to hide the puppeteers (not even dressing them all in black and trying to keep the light off them). But you did kind of forget about them after a while. The puppets themselves were pretty cool, though many of them didn't have legs, the way they were designed made for very fluid and animal-like movements. Of course it was difficult for them to show daemons changing shape so they didn't really attempt it. A few times Pan "hid" in Lyra's bag but otherwise, they didn't really address the issue of daemons changing as children.
Most of the actors were pretty good. Steve even thought the girl who played Lyra was better than the girl in the movie but take that with a grain of salt because he also admitted he only remembers 2 scenes from the movie! lol. I really liked the woman who played Coulter but wasn't as keen on the actor who played Lord Asriel. The same actor played Lee Scoresby and he had the worst Texan accent ever. I guess when you're not expecting to have any or many Americans in the audience, you don't worry too much about getting an American accent right. I imagine most of the English people in the audience though the accent was just fine, lol.
So that brings me to the topic of a lot of the actors playing multiple parts. I know that is a common thing in theater productions unless they have a big budget and can hire a bigger cast but it still bugs me. We also saw the limits of their budget with the witches who were holding onto ladders which rolled back and forth across the stage. I figured with a bigger budget, they may have used flying harness.
But that said, I have seen lower budget theater productions so this one was pretty good and was performed in the biggest theater of the Lowry building.
For the most part, it stuck to the storyline pretty well. Some scenes were switched around and some characters played minor roles they didn't in the book but that kind of stuff is expected. Overall, they stayed pretty true to books and weren't afraid to use the word "church" often instead of "the authority".
Can't wait to see Part 2!
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