HisDarkMaterials.org

Christmas is coming and dance companies are beginning to serve up the annual feast of Nutcrackers and other sweet-toothed seasonal fare. For dancers it is part of the year's routine. But for many companies, this is a crucial season - the moneyspinner that bankrolls the rest of their work.

However, ballet's hold on a popular audience - which in Britain and the US means cash-cow Christmas performances - is looking increasingly doubtful. The Nutcracker is facing increasing competition for the family audience. London companies are glancing nervously across the Atlantic, where the omens are not good.

Boston Ballet's Nutcracker has just lost its traditional Christmas home after 35 years, forced out by the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Every year, the famous New York attraction sends its Rockettes on the road and the high-kicking vaudevillians aim directly at America's Nutcrackers.

"The first year, they just ding you," says Ballet Arizona's executive director Sherry New after seeing ticket sales plummet 40 per cent. "The second year, I hear, they can devastate you." A survey for the American organisation Dance/USA found attendances for productions of The Nutcracker has fallen 10 per cent since 2000.

Denver's Colorado Ballet has responded by marketing The Nutcracker as family-friendly spectacle, and avoiding the word "ballet" wherever possible.

Against this background, the English National Ballet faces a further worry this Christmas. For the past few years, ENB has performed at the Coliseum in London's West End. But this winter it is closed for refurbishment, so the company is dragging its ballet slippers to Hammersmith in west London - an area best known for its busy flyover. Here it will perform its colourful Nutcracker and award- winning Cinderella at the Carling Apollo, a venue more used to hosting pop concerts.

The Apollo has form in ballet, and it's not encouraging. The Irish dance spectacular Riverdance stormed the place, but the Royal Ballet's season there during the redevelopment of Covent Garden was not a success. No one wants to accessorise pearls with a four-lane highway. "It isn't known as a lyric theatre," understates Matz Skoog, ENB's artistic director.

The ENB's finances depend absolutely on the success of the London Christmas season and the company is conscientiously damping down expectations this year. I've never heard so many people say "it's a challenge", and smile tightly.

Even the Cratchits weren't so dependent on their Christmas money as the ENB. Although its Arts Council funding is directed towards an extensive touring schedule, marketing director Ian Butlin, estimates that the expense of carting a huge company around the country means that every week on tour loses between

In the age of talk shows and national publicity tours, it's easy to see that every writer has at least two voices

Hearing Tolkien's voices

Nicely timed for Christmas, the National Theatre in London is staging a two-part epic for grown-ups and children about the death of God. It is the dramatised version of Philip Pullman

Small wonder that Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National, saw the dramatisation of the trilogy as the answer to a prayer - if that is the right word - for a contemporary production on an epic scale that would address the great questions that the modern arts skirt right around. As he put it in one interview, "Why are we here? Is there a God? If so, why is he indifferent to our welfare?" The answer is unequivocal: God, as he is traditionally understood, is an imposition on humanity and the life to come is just the physical survival of our atoms. As one of Pullman

Phit made a wondeful wallpaper, called Once a Year, using images from the National Theatre

Suzi Feay meets the young actors bringing Lyra and Will to life in the National Theatre version of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials'

Questions flow forth from the Philip Pullman fan, on learning that the magisterial children's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is being adapted for the National Theatre as its Christmas show. Like: how on earth are they going to do the warrior bears? The cliff-ghasts? Are there really going to be hot-air balloons and flying witches? What about the land of the dead? How, for heaven's sake, are they going to represent the daemons?

I would really like to answer those questions, or at least give some sort of hint about how this richly imagined world is going to be created for the stage. Unfortunately, all I've got to go on is one shoe. A Converse baseball sneaker, to be precise, on the foot of Dominic Cooper, who plays Will, the boy who meets Lyra, a young girl who lives in a parallel universe, and, after many adventures, falls in love with her.

Such is the secrecy surrounding the production that no part of the set or piece of costume can yet be revealed. Apart from that shoe. Cooper and his co-star, Anna Maxwell Martin, are larking about in the foyer of the National Theatre. They cut in, finish each other's sentences and tease one another. Fortunately, they're also a bit more forthcoming on the details.

"I'm very jealous of all her nice costumes. You've got lovely big fur interesting eskimo jackets..."

Anna: "He's really jealous that I've had a coat made."

Dominic: "...and I'm wearing Gap best."

John Morrell, the costume designer confirms later: "Dom's drawn the short straw. He's a boy from our world, and he's just got to look like a regular kid in the middle of all this fantasy and quirkiness. Dominic is innately kind of hip and trendy, and we've had to try and knock that down. He wears clothes a little bit too well, really."

Back to the daemons: for the uninitiated, every human character in Lyra's world has a personal daemon, or familiar, in the shape of an animal. Anyone who's ever read the books will know that this is one of the most thrilling, poignant and original aspects of the story. Some of the daemons are characters in their own right. But how can this device, so brilliant on the page, ever be made to work on stage? Anna explains: "The demons are puppets, so we have puppeteers but they're also manipulated by the actors. For Lyra, Pan [Pantalaimon, her daemon] is such an important character and also Pan talks a lot, so there's a puppeteer who is Pan and does the voice, and I just take him sometimes..." She plays with an imaginary puppet in her lap. "You have to make sure you don't forget and just do THIS!", abruptly pointing and gesturing with her puppet hand. "Your brain is constantly split between doing your lines and remembering to give life to this little thing."

Dominic: "If anyone stops for a moment and forgets, it really shows."

The story of two young people exploring a fantastical series of words is mirrored in the pair's evident delight in discovering the resources of the mighty Olivier theatre.

Dominic says delightedly: "There's this huge droom in the middle, this operating thing that goes round and up and down, and it's had another section built on top of it. I haven't even been in there yet. And that hasn't been used for years, has it?"

What's it called, I ask?

Anna picks up: "It's called a droom, it's a room under the stage. It's so exciting, isn't it?" She gasps: "We shouldn't give that away, it's going to be a real shocker when it comes up."

Cooper deadpans: "There is no droom."

One of the most powerful scenes in the book is a relatively quiet one, right towards the end. We've been building up some time to the notion that Will and Lyra are in fact the new Adam and Eve. What's that like?

Anna: "People have asked us, how much do Will and Lyra age, and it's not clear... they certainly mature. I think she's about 12 to begin with, but it's important to get to a point where it would be feasible that we would fall in love. And make love, you know?"

Dominic: "You get that feeling of the journey they've been on to reach that point where they could, and where they would... But we're doing sex workshops next week."

Anna screams with laughter. "Please put that in. '12-year-old Will and Lyra have a sex workshop.' What, just us and Nicholas Hytner? Oh God! You can do it on your own, love."

Pullman's vast drama is not exactly comforting Christmas fare and both actors are confident that certain scenes will chill audience members to the marrow. And the ending is absolutely harrowing. (Anna: "I cried my eyes out when I read the book.") Dominic muses: "I so would have kept the subtle knife. I don't know why they didn't..."

Anna: "We would never have got into that situation to begin with."

Dominic: "We would never have gone through the window."

Anna: "We are wimps!"

'His Dark Materials': National Theatre, Olivier (020 7452 3000), to 20 March

[

A world premiere... we have production images of The National Theatre

Nick Hytner's big two-part epic, His Dark Materials, has hit technical difficulties. Based on the best-selling book trilogy by Philip Pullman, the story spans many universes and calls for flying balloons, witches, demons, magic and even armored bears (don't ask).

Only a company as big as Hytner's National Theatre (with an auditorium as spectacular as the Olivier) could dare to put it on. And it has nearly defeated them, it seems.

Hytner canceled two previews of Part One last week, and has now moved the first preview of Part Two from Dec.13 to the next night. The Dec. 20 press night has been spirited to Jan. 3.

In a press statement, Hytner said, "When I took this on, I thought it was unstageable. Now I know that we can do it - but we need more time to get this hugely ambitious production right. With hindsight I should have scheduled more time. We have had to cancel the first previews of both parts. I apologize unreservedly to the people we

He likes fireworks - he scattered his stepfather's ashes via 40 rockets. But it is in children's minds that Philip Pullman really ignites a spark. He talks to Dina Rabinovitch

Had you been in the Firth of Forth last May, on an evening after it rained all day but then suddenly the skies cleared, you might have seen a deeply pagan sight. For that was the night Philip Pullman, with his step- and half-siblings, said a final farewell to the ashes of his stepfather. Forty spoonfuls of ashes, as it happens, each carefully poured and sealed into 40 fireworks, to be detonated by the assembled family.

"We couldn't decide," says Pullman. "What should we do with the ashes? Bury him at sea, scatter him over the hills? No particular reason to do either."

He sits in his winged chair, legs outstretched, master storyteller poised. Trademark red shoelaces in his brown suede boots, he toys with a whittling knife. In the middle of his study, a jumble of organised piles, is the head and shoulders of a wooden horse Pullman is carving for his first grandchild. Labelled dreamy and impractical as a child, he has rebelliously turned himself into a carpenter. Despite his lack of formal teaching - he follows manuals - his horse's head is so good you can't help but run fingers across the wooden folds of mane.

"I thought," Pullman continues, his tones level, telling the tale of the ashes, "wouldn't it be a good idea to send him up in a rocket, in a firework? And the others all thought, yeah, what a good idea. So my sister - who knows absolutely everyone who's anyone - found a firework-maker in Edinburgh, and said, 'Can you help?' and he said 'Yes.'"

For the quantity of ashes, the firework-maker made up a consignment of 40 rockets, dispensing ashes by spoon into each firework. "And you know," says Pullman, "it was great. We said a few words and then lit the rockets, and up they went, and it was the most wonderful display, and the sky was full of dad, full of stars."

Partly it is an extraordinary episode because it is so unusual, but that it should be Pullman's story is remarkable. It is almost an exact reversal of events in his trilogy, His Dark Materials, when the dead are pulled back into the land of the living, but on arrival explode into particles of matter. So when Pullman blew up his stepfather's ashes, he was living in a world of his own creation.

Pullman has been telling stories all his life, to siblings and then to the children he taught. After school, he would write in the evenings. Now no longer a teacher, he has the kindly but authoritative manner of those with clerics in their background. He is warm, too. He writes an autograph for my daughter, with the phrase "Wan Fu". He takes great pains over spelling her name right, chasing round the house for Tippex when he makes a mistake. It takes weeks to find out what Wan Fu means; no one knows, so bumping into Pullman after the opening night of his play at the National, I ask him. "Oh," he laughs, "it means '100,000 blessings'."

His grandfather, a parish priest, was a big influence. His father died when he was eight, and his mother remarried. Pullman's real dad was in the RAF, returning home only occasionally, smelling of beer and cigarettes, to swing his two boys up on his shoulders and then vanish again. His mother, he says, was "strange and difficult". Shortly after she remarried, when Pullman was nine, his grandfather told him: "Your mother is an unhappy woman and you must make allowances for her." Quite a burden for a nine-year-old, then. "I think he was trying to say she wouldn't have an easy life with my stepfather," says Pullman, "because he was an odd man, eccentric. But I dramatised it - made myself feel terribly important."

His mother, brought up in the 30s, was not educated; her parents only sent her brother to school. Her life, says her son, felt like a series of missed opportunities. For Pullman, the consequence was that she was very hard to please. "She died before I had any success with my books. She thought I was a failure."

JK Rowling and Pullman together dominate children's fiction. This is a capricious market, and Pullman's stories are seen as intellectually sounder, the more heavyweight read in a world where children's fiction is read by adults. The film of His Dark Materials is being scripted by Tom Stoppard. And the play has just begun its run at the National Theatre in London - two parts, each three hours long. Last Saturday, I saw the first preview, playing to a packed Olivier Theatre. It is a beautiful production, the daemons of the novels criss-crossing the stage with shafts of light, tissue paper creations lit from the inside.

Afterwards, people filed out past the tired-looking man in red socks, sitting with his wife. Pullman looked emotionally stunned, his face showing the impact of watching his words brought to life with the full might of the Olivier's huge chunks of stage which can be raised and lowered and wheeled round at the director's will.

When Pullman was interviewed for this article the production was still in rehearsal. But Northern Lights (first volume of the trilogy) had just come out on the Observer list of the hundred best novels. Ever. ("You have to laugh," says Pullman. "Or you run the risk of becoming conceited.")

If all that didn't fuel a chap's vanity, Pullman has also been labelled anti-God because his good guys take on God. This, though, is to misread His Dark Materials, which tells the story of Lyra. In his trilogy, Lyra re-enacts the story of the original Eve. He takes, I say, the Jewish view of Eve. Namely, that what happened in the Garden of Eden was the beginning of the world as we know it (the story appears in Bereishit, the beginning of the Five Books of Moses, for that reason), and not the great Fall, or end of all good, which is the Christian version. "Exactly right," says Pullman.

Still, getting the label anti-God has added an edge to Pullman's intellectual credibility, which may account for the huge interest in the Lyra story. His Dark Materials, rich as it is in incident and invention, is not one of the greatest novels of all time. The characterisation is mostly two-dimensional, and the description of dawning teenage sexuality makes Britney Spears' PR sound realistic. His Dark Materials - too long by half - is not even Pullman's best work.

But as Pullman himself might say, you have to laugh at the claim - made by others first, but repeated by Pullman on Radio 4's Start the Week - that he has rewritten Paradise Lost. Not every story of rebellion against authority is Miltonic. Or, to take another example, Ulysses is a rewriting of the Odyssey; Judith Kerr's Mog goes to the Vee, Eee, Tee (also the story of a departure from, and then a return to, home) is not.

In His Dark Materials, Pullman has written a children's adventure story, and to make larger claims for it is to undervalue the true distinction of Pullman's writing: his narrative gift, at once arresting and spirit-lifting. Like fireworks across a Scottish sky at night.

[

Almost by definition, a novel is a journey. Some authors, such as Jane Austen, take us through familiar and seemingly tranquil territory; some, like Tolkien, transport us to another world, full of sound and fury; all try to embed us, not just in a mental landscape, but in a physical one, too.

You don't have to sit back and take their words for it, though. Our favourite books

We've found a way to visit every one. Most are simplicity itself: others require more effort and deeper pockets (you'll need a bob or two to follow in Douglas Adams's imaginary footsteps). But, from deepest Derbyshire to deepest space, they're all do-able, and each gives an insight into the novel it follows. So don't just read the story

The following article is an excerpt from an article I found on the George Macdonald WWW Page. The article itself is about the second Harry Potter book, the Chamber of Secrets. When discussing th character Gilderoy Lockhart, the author writes:

So who is the real life model for Gilderoy Lockhart? My guess is Philip Pullman, author of The Dark Materials trilogy and many other, much admired children's books. I have a few reasons for guessing Pullman, some good, some silly. Let's start with the 'off the wall' stuff.

1) Every person I have met or read that loves his books (to include my daughters) is female. Here are a couple of raves from reviews written in the New York Times - by women:

"War, politics, magic, science, individual lives and cosmic destinies are all here. They are not flung together, they are shaped and assembled into a narrative of tremendous pace by a man with a generous, precise intelligence. If you are going to preface your books with passages from Milton, Rilke and John Ashbery, then you had better write well. Pullman does. His prose has texture and flexibility, like excellent fabric. And he gives us so much. Suspense of course, but such degrees of pleasure, excitement (the excitement of meeting characters, not just adventurers) and grief. And such joy - the joy of thinking, of testing your senses and feelings, of knowing your imagination is entering worlds not dreamed of in the usual philosophies" (Margo Jefferson, 'Harry Potter for Grown-Ups', NYT, 20 January, 2002).

"One can only hope that where Pullman leads [the children] will follow, and discover the dissenting tradition from which these books spring. This is remarkable writing: courageous and dangerous, as the best art should be. Pullman envisions a world without God, but not without hope" (Erica Wagner, Times of London, quoted NYT, 'The Man who Dared Make Religion the Villain', 6 November 2000).

2) His Dark Materials trilogy was 'big news' and Pullman a star at English book fairs when Harry Potter was still just a new title from a small publishing house - and it is at one of those events that Rowling is said to have met her 'Lockhart' model; and

3) One of the lead characters in more than one of Pullman's books is named Sallie Lockhart.

Onto more serious reasons for Rowling to choose Pullman as her 'Man Without Chest' Lockhart model:

1) Pullman feels nothing but disdain for C. S. Lewis and the 'Narnia School' of Children's fiction.

"Mr. Pullman's book offers an explicit alternative to C.S.Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, with their pervasive Christian message. In the Narnia books, nestled inside the delightful stories of talking animals, heroic challenges and whimsical scenes, the meaning is clear: the heroes find true happiness only after death, when their spiritual superiority buys them passage to heaven.

"It is a conclusion with which Mr. Pullman thoroughly disagrees. "When you look at what C. S. Lewis is saying, his message is so antilife, so cruel, so unjust," he said. "The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' - meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better."

"Instead, Mr. Pullman argues for a "republic of heaven" where people live as fully and richly as they can because there is no life beyond. "I wanted to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife," he said" (Sarah Lyall, NYT, 6 Nov 2000).

"He opposes the tradition of children's literature as Christian allegory, made famous by the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. He is a disciple of that sensual visionary William Blake. And by revising (as Blake did) Milton's theology of Paradise lost and regained, he is paying tribute to Milton the poet and political dissident. He thinks it's dangerous to believe that innocence is at its best when untouched by experience. Or that morality is at its purest when untouched by joy" (Margo Jefferson, NYT, 20 Jan 2002)

2) Pullman is a public atheist and despiser of organized religion.

"Shockingly, Mr. Pullman, a 53-year-old former schoolteacher, has created a world in which organized religion - or, at least, what organized religion has become - is the enemy and its agents are the misguided villains

We just received this update from the National Theatre:

The National Theatre reports: "We are dealing with issues of safety and wanted to make sure that everything was truly ready before we opened."

Said Nicholas Hytner, director of the productions and of the NT: "When I took this on, I thought it was unstageable. Now I know that we can do it - but we need more time to get this hugely ambitious production right. With hindsight I should have scheduled more time. We have had to cancel the first previews of both parts. I apologise unreservedly to the people we've had to turn away. We're scheduling extra performances to accommodate those people."

The productions of the two-part adaptation of Pullman's best-seller are amongst the most ambitious the National has staged. The first two previews of Part I (on 4th, 5th December) were cancelled when insuperable technical difficulties were encountered during final rehearsals, and the first preview of Part II (13 December) has been delayed by one evening.

In response, the National is to schedule extra performances for people unable otherwise to get into the sold-out run.

The National announced that the press performance for its two-part adaptation of Philip Pullman's award-winning 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is to be delayed until 3 January.

The originally scheduled press performance was Saturday 20 December.

The Times reported today that:

"Technical difficulties have delayed the opening of the Royal National Theatre

Nicolette Jones picks Christmas books for children of all ages from this year's fine and varied assortment

It has been a remarkable year for children's books. In June, readers queued at midnight outside bookshops to buy J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a book that broke all records for speed and quantity of sales. A few months later, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was longlisted for the Man Booker prize, and the chairman of the judges, John Carey, expressed dismay at its exclusion from the shortlist. In December, fans of Philip Pullman made the dramatisation of His Dark Materials at the National Theatre a sellout before opening night. Celebrities and distinguished writers, meanwhile, rushed to jump onto the children's books bandwagon. Peter Ackroyd and Jeanette Winterson turned their hands to children's literature, Madonna unleashed The English Roses and Mr Peabody's Apples, and the Duchess of York followed up Budgie the tiresome helicopter with the irritatingly twee Little Red.

AGES 0-5

But forget the celebs. There are plenty of other excellent books available for young readers this Christmas. One of the year's most likeable picturebook debuts for 2-5s, for instance, is Halibut Jackson by David Lucas (Andersen Press

Timothy Dalton's new play - his first theatre project in 12 years - has suffered a serious setback.

The former Bond star was last night due to start a four-month run at the National Theatre, in an adaptation of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. But at the last minute the performance was cancelled.

"There has been a serious technical hitch," says an NT spokesman. "The mechanism which raises the stage up and down has broken. There's nothing we can do."

Eleven hundred people had bought tickets for last night's show. They will receive a refund, but are unlikely to be able to see an alternative performance.

"Swapping to another date is looking a bit tricky as there are now no tickets available until February, when part two will be showing," adds the spokesman. "People will be disappointed but there's simply no way around it."

[

On Scotsman.com, Gill Mills, Presentor of Radio One