Lord of the Flies
Adapted from William Golding by Nigel Williams
Directed by Anthony Lau
Chichester Festival Theatre
Star rating: 3.5
Lord of the Flies is about much more than a group of boys from different backgrounds, air-wrecked on a remote island, tying to sort themselves out. I have always read William Golding’s 1954 novel as an allegory for a post-war world in chaos. As such it touches on huge issues such as democracy, leadership, religion, fear, power and division of nations.
Nigel Williams’s adaptation is more visceral and disturbing than any dramatisation I’ve seen before which is, perhaps, appropriate for these troubled times. 72 years after the novel was written, things are arguably even worse today than they were then.
Georgia Lowe’s dramatic design gives us the unadorned stage in all its massive depth: a cavernous thing of bare scaffolds and gantries. And there’s no attempt at realism. The conch, a symbol of democracy which has to be held in order to speak – at least until democracy breaks down – is here represented by a microphone and there’s an upright piano on stage along with several prop trunks.
Director Anthony Lau makes good use of silences, very loud explosions and sudden house lights – there’s nothing predictable about this show. And he goes to town for the end of the first half as the boys run amok and kill one of their number who is somehow conflated with the pig. We get strobe lighting, a lot of chanting, mounting tension and so much blood that it takes the stage crew the whole interval to clean up the mess. If there’s a point to a 1950s pop song being played on piano and sung at this moment, I’m afraid it passed me by. Similarly why do we get recordings of “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, “Blue Moon” and the like as we take our seats?
It’s a young, all male cast and there’s much strength here. Sheyi Cole commands the stage as the troubled, decent Ralph struggling with unlooked for responsibility. Alfie Jallow delights as Piggy, the boy who comes from a much humbler family and represents the voice of reason and commonsense. And Tucker St Ivany is terrific as Jack, who leads the breakaway group and goes native. St Ivany has unusually expressive feet.
Sound design by Giles Thomas adds to the menacing atmosphere by providing near continuous, unsettling music under the dialogue. Moreover, it’s effective when it stops suddenly in one of the production’s silent moments.
It’s a nice touch to have Jallow deliver a send-up trigger warning at the beginning and I liked the way Lau deals with the arrival of the British Navy at the end – but I won’t give it away here.
It’s interesting theatre and an imaginative reworking of the novel although I’m not totally convinced by some of its departures. The model pig is far too jokey for something so serious, for example. and the ripping up of the floor in the battle is a bit daft. In places it feels as if everyone, including Lau, is trying slightly too hard.
Photographs: Manuel Harlan
