Robert Tanitch reviews Lord of the Flies at Sadler’s Wells, London, EC1
William Golding’s powerful and disturbing parable has always been popular with young people, ever since it was published in 1954.
A party of schoolchildren, aged 12 to 13, the only survivors of an airplane crash, are stranded on a desert island. Left to their own devices, and without any adults to check them, they quickly descend to savagery.
Golding always said that the problem for any stage and film production would be to show the boys becoming men. Nigel Williams’ adaptation was originally performed by children at his son’s school. It has been staged all over the world ever since and there have been two films.
Matthew Bourne and Scott Ambler’s eagerly awaited version has to be seen for what it is: an immensely worthy and quite admirable project to engage young people through dance.
6,000 boys and young men have already participated in workshops across the country and they hope to reach 8,000 by the end of the run.
Over 150 boys have already appeared in the actual stage production, which is in the middle of a tour of 13 cities. The cast is headed by eight professionals and includes, as it does at every venue it visits, 24 local boys and young men, aged 10 to 20.
As a project Lord of the Flies is a success. As a dance theatre version of Golding’s novel it is inadequate. Choreographically, it is a huge disappointment and physically not a patch on Timothy Sheader’s production at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park three years ago.
The performance is never really the visceral experience it should be. There is no island. The action takes place in a hanger. There is no airplane wreckage. The characterization is superficial. Piggy is killed by a spotlight falling gingerly on him.
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