TREASURE ISLAND. To 22 October.

Pitlochry

TREASURE ISLAND
by R L Stevenson adapted by Grace Barnes

Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 22 October 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 2pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01796 484626
boxoffice@pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 August

Mea culpa possibly. A week ago I was bemoaning how London's Scoop had turned R L Stevenson's adventure into a pantomime. Now I find Pitlochry premiering Grace Barnes' adaptation, and it's very serious. Before the end I found myself wanting just a soupcon of the fun in Phil Wilmott's version.

It would have been, of course, a soupcon too much, a jarring style clash. But any guilt feelings I had could have come from the stage, for guilt is Barnes' version's theme. Stevenson's story is re-enacted while it's been written down by the adult Jim Hawkins (Hywel Morgan, left little to do in the main action but stand around holding the book he's writing like an extra no-one's noticed is there).

Meanhile, young Jim's brought to life with enthusiastic innocence by Kezia Burrows. She' isn't Jemima Hawkins, mind - the character stays male. Properly enough, but what sort of mixed-up feminism (or mere ill-thought dramaturgy) is it that has those pirates performed by women as female characters? Blind Pew should surely become Blind Pewess, and Helen Logan's character become Black Bitch. There were women pirates, but Stevenson's are a masculine group in tone and talk, and the result of this playing a muddle.

Gregory Gudgeon's piratical cook Silver has the marks of a fine, subtle interpretation, aided by Burrows' Jim, who finds a trust and respect in Silver that the social bigwigs on board the treasure-ship Hispaniola never show him. But the production burdens him (literally) with a joke puppet parrot (the sole item in common with the Scoop show, though clearly a poor relation) while the script bundles the points it wants to make about Long John late on, determinedly telling them, rather than letting the action develop them organically. A shame, for the performance is colourful and sharp.

Explicit thematic overkill darkens and unfortunately blurs the version. Livesy (Dougal Lee, a fine Pitlochry stalwart, unusually betrayed into actorish falseness at key moments) seems to live surrounded by Hispaniola relics in older age, obsessed with guilt. Another Pitlochry institution, Martyn James, precise and detailed in the same director's current Mockingbird, is a generalised, featureless Squire.

Which matters because one thematic point that makes some headway in Barnes' version is the parallel between the greed of pirates and law-abiding folks. It's a point hardest to relate to the hired captain , Smollett, and Jonathan Coote (Mockingbird's fine Atticus) does a decent if slightly anonymous job in the role.

This remains an ambitious adaptation, but one still in need of workshops and script development to achieve what seems to be its aim. As always, Pitlochry's production values are high, the scenic elements creating an epic sense, or focusing on tight situations fluidly, especially under Jeanine Davies' richly sculptural lighting.

But only in the last scene does John Durnin's production haul the version's aims into some pattern, and by then it is rather late in the dramatic voyage.

Hawkins: Hywel Morgan
Jim: Kezia Burrows
Long John Silver: Gregory Gudgeon
Dr Livesy: Dougal Lee
Squire Trelawney: Martyn James
Captain Smollett: Jonathan Coote
Grey/Arrow: Stewart Cairns
Housekeeper/Silver's Wife: Jacqueline Dutoit
Captain Bones/Tom Morgan: Richard Addison
Mother: Karen Davies
Father/Redruth: Robin Harvey Edwards
Black Dog: Helen Logan
Blind Pew: Clare Richards
Harry/Ben Gunn: Dennis Conlon
Israel Hands: Joel Trill
O'Brien: Aoibheann O'Hara
George Merry: Lynette Clarke
Dick: Dominic Brewer

Director: John Durnin
Designer/Costume: Adrian Rees
Lighting: Jeanine Davies
Fight director: Raymond Short

2005-08-15 16:36:18