Neville's Island

If I tell you the TV version of this popular comedy by Tim Firth included performances by Tim Spall and David Bamber you will get some idea of the age range of the characters. It’s a play about middle-age, or rather men trying to ignore or stave off middle-age. Our four hapless gents (played here by teenage pupils from Sherborne School) are marooned on an island in thick fog in the middle of Derwent Water on a team building exercise for middle management. Amongst them is Roy (George Day) who has recently had a long period of “time off” from work, thus fuelling the idea that he is mentally unstable. Much of the thin plot, such as it is, revolves around the other three worrying that he will turn into “the beast” within as depicted in Golding’s classic novel, Lords Of The Flies.It’s giving nothing away to say he doesn’t, as this piece is more about relationships than story. The script is witty and often quite profound. The fractious battle for control between Neville (Luke MacKay) and Gordon (Ed Dixon) is cannily observed and reasonable well played, though both actors need to learn the art of standing still occasionally.. The best of the bunch is Hubert Mainwaring Burton’s Angus, who has arrived for the exercise kitted out with everything but the knowledge that his wife is having an affair, a fact revealed to him only when he tries to contact her by mobile to enable a rescue. The production falls down in two major areas. Firstly director Jim Donnelly hasn’t sufficiently taken into account that this is a three-sided space. Most of it is staged as if for an end-on performance, and sitting on the side I missed vital nuances of facial expression and gesture and some moments were masked from me altogether. The biggest flaw, however, is in choosing to do this play at all. There are so, so many plays that this moderately talented troupe could have had a go at, where their ages would have been appropriate or the fact that they were playing older than they are didn’t matter. This is not such a play. It is a play about the tragedy of reaching middle–age and realising that your life doesn’t add up to much. That you have under-achieved, failed even. That you are not loved as you thought you were. These young lads, by definition, know nothing of such feelings (yet). They can only guess at them, and consequently much of the acting rang hollow. Simply physically they looked as though they could make a pretty good stab at surviving for days on this island, or swim the short distance to shore, even in the fog which stranded them. For the play to work on any level it needs the podgy, aging losers it depicts to look like just that.Towards the end Angus finally loses it with the pompous, loathsome Gordon and his furious explosion and attack with a machete should be spine-chilling – the rage and cries of man in pain - defeated, angry, thwarted by love and life. In this production, through no fault of the actors, it was rendered as a schoolyard brawl.