Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Neville’s Island’, which is at Shrewsbury’s Wightman Theatre (just off The Square) until Saturday 28th November.
Marches Theatre Company have made an excellent choice for their second play in their new venture at The Wightman. Tim Firth is rightly revered for his classic screenplay ‘Calendar Girls’. But right at the start of his playwriting career in 1992 he was nominated for an Olivier Award for his considerably less cosy comedy ‘Neville’s Island’…which has been playing all over the planet ever since.
Four middle-aged, middle-class, middle managers from a boring bottled water company in Salford have been sent to The Lakes on one of those fearsome corporate team-building weekend … where, of course, the exact opposite happens. Embarking upon an orienteering exercise, the hopelessly out of condition suburban desperadoes decide to read far too much into the clues provided. The simple instruction ‘Head for The Plough’ is interpreted as a quest to find an arrangement of rocks and islets in the middle of Derwentwater that resemble Ursa Major; completely ignoring the fact that there is a pub up the road of the same name.
And so it is that four sodden, shipwrecked explorers crawl onto the rocky shores of Rampsholme Island…their Keswick Council rowing boat sunk to the bottom of the lake, together with all their food. What unfolds is a truly ridiculous situation comedy in which the laughs arrive like exocets. If The Marx Brothers had ever done ‘Lord of The Flies’, I fancy it would have been rather like this.
Director Adrian Monahan has assembled a highly professional cast to play some hugely recognisable characters. And typical of hopeless pen pushers, the four have appointed their weakest member as their leader.
Philip Jenning’s ‘Neville’ is a neatly observed, ineffectual administrator who fails to grapple with a remorselessly disintegrating situation, whilst pathetically trying to light a fire the boy scout way. Neville Cann is very funny as the hangdog ‘Angus’ whose rucksack is brimming with every conceivable piece of top-of-the-range survival gear, including the very latest mobile phone that has everything a techno-geek could wish for… except power. And the boyish Barrie Ryan English plays born-again Roy with a well considered balance of outward vulnerability and inner strength.
But Tim Firth gives the Groucho lines to Gordon; played with empty venom and ultra-acerbity by a superbly mutinous Nigel Peever, who goes for the jugular of every institution from French Cricket to Christianity. He is extremely funny…and could be funnier still by backing off just a little.
The scenarios just get sillier as four grown men fight over a single sausage and a soggy piece of pizza; try to sleep together under Angus’ survival sheet (carefully camouflaged to prevent rescuers spotting it); and have a close encounter with a floating disco. But Firth’s central theme of ‘human frailty under duress’ grows ever darker as night draws in and the comedy becomes increasingly uncomfortable.
‘Neville’s Island’ is no ‘Autumn Tints’ tour. There are precipices aplenty.
For tickets and information visit http://www.marchestheatre.co.uk