Lord of the Flies

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Lord of the Flies is a Dangerous Book about Boys. Written by Briton William Golding in the shadow of the atomic bomb, the novel is rich with onomatopoeic imagery (the roar and then plop used to describe a tangled parachute is a wonder) and allusions to Milton’s Paradise Lost and Ballantyne’s Coral Island festoon the narrative with allegorical layers to be turned over and over.

Director Gregory Jones having staged directly from the text in previous productions, challenged himself with Nigel Williams’ adaptation, a translation that was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1995.

The island is only imagined, as the audience is greeted by a blackboard ready set - tables and high stools in a typical classroom and boys in uniforms at attention. An overlay soundtrack of rhythm that sounds like a jump cut heartbeat is ominous, and it is not a plane crash that scars an island paradise and leaves these boys isolated, but a bomb in civilization itself separating children from adults.

The numerous lost boys of Littluns are reduced to one - Perceval (Thomas James), who despite his height did make you think he could actually be aged six as related in the original. Daniel Garrett as initially reluctant leader Ralph, impressively managed to stand on his head, which I thought was hilarious as his character is mentioned doing this very act numerous times in the first chapter – giving blood rushing physicality to the disorientation of a world turned upside down.

Nick Maclaine portrayed Jack as boldly belligerent, a school prefect confident in his right to rule and egged on from mere leader to despotic tyrant by the mysterious-boy-of-no-particular-school, Roger (Nicholas Hiatt) a character only referred to in the novel quite late in the piece, but who instills terror in all who see him painted savage.

Simon (Daniel Klemens), reflective and unpopular as prophets are apt to be, disappears in his epileptic fit and emerges with not just the truth about the Beast from the Air but the realization that society is fragmenting, so of course as harbinger he is killed in a disturbing sequence of sound and fury. Piggy (Izaak Lim) is left as a lone nagging voice of civilization, adamant on the importance of the conch, neurotic with his “ass-mar” and rightly fearful for his life.

Chalked chapters written across the back wall beneath a poster of the Queen marked the passage of time, but the compact pacing never lagged despite its Educational Edition repute, and this adventure into the heart of man’s darkness played out to an intense finale of almost unbearable apprehension…then suddenly, a grownup steps into the room.

Having read this recently, I have wondered about this ending - how do you process the experience of being hunted or a hunter? At 12, how does this ugly reality shape you and your future?

Are you forever tainted, or will you put the incidents down to childish games and a series of unfortunate accidents vaguely remembered in the far distant adult future?

I guess it makes you think - despite the promise of each new generation, could we have avoided the way the world is now? For it may not be just the wake of all that has come before, but as illuminated in this work, there is the uncomfortable knowledge within each of us of an innate turmoil between order and anarchy.