Lord of the Flies 

Sadlers Wells Theatre, London EC1/Touring

4/5

THERE’S no holding back in this dance adaptation of  William Golding’s dystopian creation Lord of the Flies by choreographer Scott Ambler and artistic director Matthew Bourne. 

Dancers from the New Adventures and Re:Bourne company are joined by a swarm of 22 boys drawn from across London, with the likes of the 10-year-old Jared Irving and 17-year-old Aston Joshua catching the eye.

Here the action of Golding’s novel cataloguing the descent from childhood innocence to savagery is relocated from desert island to abandoned theatre, where the abandoned schoolboys make their own pecking-order society before anarchy sets in, with inevitably brutal consequences.

It’s an adaptation that certainly makes an impact and there’s an ever-increasing sinking feeling witnessing the boys succumbing to the follow-the-leader brutality and aggression.   

Of the dancers, Layton Williams gives an impressive solo as Simon and Danny Reuben and Sam Archer perfectly capture the combative rivalry between Jack and Ralph, while Simon Plant provides moving moments in the hapless dance of Piggy searching blindly for his spectacles. 

Ambler and Bourne’s vision, along with Terry Davies’s music, have few light moments. The overwhelming ferocity of the dance sequences and sternum-crunching sound designed by Paul Groothuis inevitably call to mind boy-children acting out combat games elsewhere in the world among the air strikes destroying the places they live and play in. 

Tours to Millennium Centre Cardiff,  October 22-25 and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, November 5-8, details: new-adventures.net

 Peter Lindley