William Golding’s 1954 novel is doubly pessimistic about the human tendency towards violence. Schoolchildren on an evacuation flight from a UK under nuclear attack are stranded by an air crash on a desert island where, granted a second chance at civilisation, they build one just as brutal and ruinous as the one they lost.
Golding’s gloom was driven by the Holocaust and the start of a cold war, and a reasonable reading of the book is that he might have been surprised that civilisation still exists seven decades later. Even so, his bleak vision feels justified by jumpy governments, and military and social divisions. Piggy, the most humane student, believes that everything can be resolved with “meetings” – Golding’s code for diplomacy and voting. That plea now feels more futile than ever.
Although this bleak scenario applies globally, Anthony Lau’s revival of an adaptation by Nigel Williams – written for schools in 1991 and premiered professionally by the RSC four years later – reflects Golding’s note to Williams that Lord of the Flies reflected “the breakdown of English parliamentary democracy”. Loz Tait’s costumes are recognisable as public school blazers, with Piggy’s casuals suggesting state school.
The castaways expire or bring out their worst on a largely bare stage (designed by Georgia Lowe) littered with large flight cases that become multiple things. An island pig – the plot’s key prop – is represented by a plastic mask and a piñata. A hyper-busy production throws everything at the show: smoke, shock lighting changes (by Matt Daw) and litres of stage gore, the full interval needed to wipe down the stage for the second half.
Alfie Jallow’s Piggy starts by reading out a trigger warning but, sensibly, given the story’s theme of cruelty, is spared none of the physical insults that a modern sensitivity reader might remove. Jallow wins the audience’s sympathy with intelligence and dignity, while professional debutant Sheyi Cole is commanding and charming as Ralph, in a sparky young cast.
It’s unusual to use a three decade old literary adaptation because context changes how we see a novel. (A new BBC TV version is planned.) When book and play first appeared, their suggestion of an innate arc towards violent self-destruction was striking enough. Now that such moral entropy is a working daily assumption, it might be time for a version in which Piggy and Ralph are given bigger rhetorical weapons against the depravity of their peers.
