He's a dead ringer for James Corden, with a similar cheeky charm, comic assurance, earnest determination, and tendency to overplay there's rather too much shouting and swallowing his lines. Samuel Creasey makes a very promising debut in the role. Our genial guide is 12-year-old Malcolm Polstead, who works in his mum's pub but has academic inclinations.

It makes for an engaging enough adventure yarn - necessarily episodic, as is the novel, but sleekly presented. Lavery's dialogue is all exposition, though she does add some welcome wit. Much of the wonder of Pullman's creation, including some of the more mysterious and mystical aspects of La Belle Sauvage, is absent, and the philosophical debate is muted. We don't have a lead character as vivid as Lyra, nor armoured bears or hot-air balloons, witches (other than a brief glimpse) or windows to another world.

However, it also invites comparisons, and here the show suffers. Of course, part of the fun for avid Pullman fans is spying the elements that will later become significant, primarily our future protagonist Lyra Belacqua, here just a baby, but also her parents, Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, the growing power of religious faction the Magisterium, the all-important prophecy, the research into Dust, and the alethiometer. That makes this particular work more of a filler chapter, adding in backstory to an existing tale rather than offering a complete and autonomous one. It's a prequel to His Dark Materials, but the next instalment of Pullman's new Book of Dust trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth, is a sequel instead, and the third volume has yet to appear. In fairness to Hytner, and to adaptor Bryony Lavery, La Belle Sauvage is a tricky proposition.

Unfortunately, it falls short of conjuring that same magic. So, it's easy to understand the thinking behind this adaptation of Pullman's latest addition to the series at Hytner's new home - the Bridge Theatre. Almost 20 years ago, Nicholas Hytner brought Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy to the stage in a memorable two-part production at the National Theatre.

Book of dust bridge theatre