Terry Pratchett's Nation at the NT

[carolanne5]

Our work Xmas do last Thursday involved a trip to the NT to see Terry Pratchett's Nation.  I'd been looking forward to it for a long time so I'm sad to say that I was a little disappointed.  I wasn't alone either, of the eleven of us who went only two said they liked it without qualifications.  The fact that around ten percent of the audience

Comments

[morganmuffle]

The adaptation. Absolutely the adaptation was to blame. Well when I say blame I can see why they struggled but yeah.

And it's a pity people left because I think the second half was better (but I guess on Thursday people may have thought what was the point in staying when the snow was probably going to make return home difficult)

[carolanne5]

In which case I'll definitely read the book. I'd like to see how all the individual plot strands unwind in the book at their natural place. Then perhaps I'll have more sympathy/appreciation for the final scenes.

[morganmuffle]

There are a couple of scenes in the book, early on, which I wondered how on earth they'd stage and pretty much they just didn't and I think they messed a bit with the emotional arc of the whole thing.

But I'll be interested to see what you think having watched then read rather than vice versa!

[hooton]

I've read some really bad reviews for that play, which is why I wasn't keen to see it. That said, almost all of those bad reviews point out that this was always going to be a v. difficult book to adapt (and I should say that I haven't read it myself) and given the dark themes, there was a lot of surprise that the NT chose it for its Christmas production.