Following the National Theatre`s success with plays based on novels by well-loved children`s writers like Philip Pulman ("His Dark Materials"), Jamila Gavin ("Coram Boy") and Michael Morpurgo ("War Horse"), the National now stages Mark Ravenhill`s exhilarating adaptation of Terry Pratchett`s witty and challenging adventure story in a major Christmas production for 2009. Its a parallel world, 1860. Two teenagers thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau`s village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other`s language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe`s fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as