TREASURE ISLAND. To 23 April.

Coventry

TREASURE ISLAND
by Robert Louis Stevenson adapted by Andy Cannon and Iain Johnstone

Warwick Arts Centre To 23 April 2005
Sat 2.30pm & 7pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 024 7652 4524
www.warwickartscentre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 AprilIf Stephano and Trinculo, the ship's galley staff from The Tempest, had missed that play's island they could have ended up like the two ragged-clothed characters here, floating nowhere on a raft, growing increasingly quarrelsome and possessive, Iain of his ukulele, Andy of his favourite book, Treasure Island. On this craft, the two enact the story, with quarrels and misunderstandings on the way and a convention-defying willingness to recruit the audience as willing desperadoes. It's shamelessly good fun for people aged 8+.

True, the props that have found their way to the raft to help the story along include such less-than-typical flotsam as a double-bass, but chance is a fine thing and a sense of improvisation never leaves the briskly energetic, wittily detailed storytelling style. A shirt stretched over two crossed sticks becomes a ship's mast; a chest marked Kenya Tea becomes Jim Hawkins' apple-barrel.

Cannon plays the smart one, befitting the expert on Stevenson's story (the advantage of reading, and its joy, are implied in the play). Johnstone, the big, bearded one, plays multiple roles, his physical dominance being undercut from within them (the arrogant squire with a lampshade-hat retching with seasickness), in his shipboard persona and slowness to grasp a point, and in the sympathy he seeks at several points. There's a gentleness too to his enthusiastic playfulness, demanding the upended ladies' brollie that represents Long John Silver's parrot look at him and twisting the crook-handle round to achieve the effect.

When the curtain goes up for act two to discover Cannon tied to a steak on the tea chest, which Johnstone is stuffing with paper to set alight, it's the power of carrying on the story that saves the day.

For Johnstone's been annoyed; the one thing nobody does is harm his ukulele and Cannon's offended by painting a skull-and-crossbones on it. The incident illustrates the way the seafaring duo move in and out of Stevenson's story like a reader putting down and picking up a book. And it mirrors the way imaginations enter into a well-told tale, something that describes both novel and Wee Stories' adaptation.

Cast/Directors :
Andy Cannon, Iain Johnstone
Designer/costume: Shona Reppe
Lighting: John MacKenzie

2005-04-23 08:45:01