TREASURE ISLAND: adapted Paterson. To 2 August.

Tour.

TREASURE ISLAND
by Robert Louis Stevenson adapted by Stuart Paterson.

Birmingham Stage Company Tour to 2 August 2008.
Runs 1hr 45min One interval.
Review: Alan Geary: 8 July 2008 at Theatre Royal Nottingham.

Yo Ho No!
No-one wants to put the sea-boot in when a stage version of a great classic is less than successful but this one’s a lot less than successful.

No doubt he’s trying to keep the thing down to a manageable length for the kiddies, but Stuart Paterson’s adaptation is too ruthless. The arrival of Billy Bones is cut, we get nothing of Jim’s mother - this is an all-male cast - and nothing of the death of his father or that conversation-stopping confrontation between Billy Bones and Dr Livesey in the pub. Nor is there any build-up of atmosphere to make the arrival of Blind Pew terrifying. Pew himself looks more like John the Baptist than the stuff of Stevenson’s nightmares.

It might be the fault of an undemanding director (Greg Banks), but only now and again does the standard of acting rise to the occasion. It does when Ben Gunn appears: quite rightly, Christopher Llewellyn doesn’t play him for laughs but gives him real pathos. Otherwise the characters are insufficiently differentiated: in this context a little bit of honest to goodness ham wouldn’t have been out of place.

Gavin Robertson has to try not to be Robert Newton. His Long John Silver is the only one of the villains to dump that pirate accent we all know and love - his sounds Cockney – and he has a bulky peg-leg instead of fresh air, which is a shame. In his dealings with Jim he never comes over as avuncular or fulsome or sly. His parrot, the eighty-year-old Cap’t Flint, is played by an awkward parrot version of a third-rate ventriloquist’s dummy.

Jackie Trousdale gives us a shiver-me-timbers set with a lot of rope about. It’s ideal for the ship scenes but it’s not adaptable; it calls for too much imagination on the part of the audience to convince as The Admiral Benbow pub or as an island. The nautical and battle sound effects are good; so are the sea-shanties.

You wouldn’t go so far as to serve this production with the Black Spot but, all things considered, it deserves a Yo Ho No.

Jim Hawkins: John Cockerill.
Long John Silver: Gavin Robertson.
Billy Bones/Captain Smollett: Nigel Harris.
Squire Trelawney: Leo Atkin.
Black Dog/Israel Hands: Brendan Foster.
Dr Livesey: Anthony Houghton.
Blind Pew/Ben Gunn: Christopher Llewellyn.
Dick Johnson: Graeme Dalling.
George Merry: Matthew Weyland.
Gray/Anderson: Lawrence Stubbings.

Director: Greg Banks.
Designer: Jackie Trousdale.
Lighting: Jason Taylor.
Sound : Tom Lishman.
Music: Matthew Scott.
Fight director: Andrew Ashenden.

2008-07-10 02:40:38