“We operate a hierarchy system here,” declares standup comedian Jayde Adams to a lippy member of the audience. “And this is my pub.” Then, moving further towards the front of the stage and tilting from the hips towards the front rows: “Tell me, what’s your name? … And what do you do, Amelia? … Learning support teacher!” Adams steps back, looks towards the auditorium with baleful gaze: “That is what we call in the trade a comedy cul-de-sac.”
Adams is playing the landlady of the Benbow Inn, which tonight is hosting – she points to a notice pinned to the panelling – the “Bristol Storytelling festival”. A bearded feller in a denim jacket shuffles up to the mic to begin the “legend of Captain Flint and his mysterious treasure island …” The pub locals join in, playing on piano, percussion, violin and piccolo, double bass, guitar, clarinet and accordion – “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest …” The chorus moves. A date has been added to the notice on the panelling: 1775.
Jayde Adams as Ben Gunn and company
This lively framing device leads us into a new musical version of Treasure Island by former Bristol University students Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary (creators of The Great British Bake Off Musical and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ – The Musical). The eight-strong cast of actor-musicians transports us to a world of pirates, sea voyages, buried treasure, talking parrots and singing coconuts. Tom Rogers’s set makes good use of the theatre’s fly tower, surprising us into a sail-filled harbour, on to a ship’s deck beneath the rigging and a palm tree-ed desert island.
Following the example of Bryony Lavery’s 2014 National Theatre adaptation, the young hero becomes a cabin girl (a lively Adryne Caulder-James). Here, though, Robert Louis Stevenson’s tempestuous adventure is anodised into a simple story arc charting the youngster’s route to self-realisation. Directed by Paul Foster, the production has charm, some good tunes and clanging swordfights but lacks the sense of fear and danger that make the original timelessly thrilling.
Treasure Island – A New Musical Adventure is at Bristol Old Vic until 10 January
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Photographs by Johan Persson