Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Treasure Island’, which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until Saturday 7th January
There is a most spectacular moment towards the end of ‘Treasure Island’ when countless gold doubloons suddenly shower down from an unexpected source and fill the stage with shimmering light and tumbling movement. It’s a special moment. But it’s a long time coming.
Birmingham Rep has picked up on the huge success of the National Theatre’s 2014 production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s children’s classic and restaged it one degree of latitude north of the Capital. Having seen the London show via a live transmission, I can assure you the acting in Birmingham is also first rate. But I sense the shadow of the company accountant over the production values.
Director Philip Breen and designer Mark Bailey have noticed similarities in style between an old fashioned Victorian Theatre and an even older fashioned galleon. They both depend on canvas and ropes. It’s a clever (and economical) concept and they make very good use of it when managing storms and mutinies, and the setting of sails. The big problem with Bryony Lavery’s faithful adaptation is she feels obliged to fully re-tell the back stories of Billy Bones, Blind Pugh and Black Dog before a sail is hoisted. That process takes 45 minutes; which must have felt like an eternity to the parties of small but impeccably-behaved school children I shared the auditorium with on Thursday afternoon. Even I was mouthing “get on with it!”
With the stage laid bare to the back wall like a Shakespearian tragedy and with very little colour (save the puppet parrot) the 18 actors have to do a lot of work. There are outbreaks of shouting, which the acoustics don’t take kindly to, and there are periods when the plot struggles to get across the footlights; but the Principals have the measure of the place.
Michael Hodgson’s excellent Long John Silver rants and raves and pirouettes on his wooden leg … and seemingly has power to abate storms and persuade audiences to like him.
He benefits enormously from Lavery’s outlandish decision to turn Jim Hawkins in Jemima Hawkins. It’s a move that works a treat on every level. As Arthur Ransome noted, girls ought to be allowed to have adventures too, and at least half the young audience would agree. It changes more than you might imagine…as even Pirates are unlikely to slaughter a girl; and Silver’s relationship with her swings from paternal to passionate. Turning Doctor Livesey into a woman also works wonders. Now the maternal necessity to reunite ‘Jim’ with her grandmother has a much greater imperative. Sian Howard (who’s been kidnapped from Theatr Clwyd) comes across all school ma’amly as she chastises Long John Silver’s shocking scansion in his poem about how to locate the buried treasure.
Lavery also has great fun with Able Seaman Grey. Having died with dramatic haste on the receiving end of a black spot, actor Dave Fishley wipes off the skeletal face paint of Billy Bones to re-emerge as the insignificant Grey; grey by name and grey nature. So Grey and fey, in fact, that the pirates hardly notice him and even forget to chain him up. Plenty of grown up amusement there.
Tonderai Munyevu also gets well-earned laughs as the powder-puff fop who assumes command without having the faintest clue what to do. There are some deliciously Roald Dahl lines about grown-ups being as useless as steamed puddings and about stinking piles of seagull guano. And I loved Red Ruth’s dying line “Thanks for all the pies”.
However, the headlong charge of the show rests firmly on the tender shoulders of Sarah Middleton (pictured) as ‘Jim’, who takes Lavery’s cross gender challenge by the horns and vaults it with room to spare. It’s a spirited portrayal of someone who is growing up before our very eyes…shocked at first at becoming a pirate, but later rather buoyed by becoming a murderer.
But it’s a monumental show in a cavernous setting and my abiding concern is the mismatch between the expectations of the piece and the age of the audience watching it.