Neville's Island (play)

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Neville's Island is a comedy play for stage and screen by Tim Firth, first staged at Scarborough in 1992.

Contents

The action takes place in November on a small island in Derwentwater, with four British businessmen on a team-building weekend.

Outline

Four managers from a mineral water company based in Salford go on a team-building exercise in the English Lake District and become stranded on a wooded island. All are quite different. Neville is the incompetent team leader, Angus a fussy perfectionist, Roy an unstable birdwatching Christian, while Gordon, a loner from a working-class background, has a talent for mocking the others. A mist rolls in, the only food they have is one cold sausage, and the men become desperate. They argue over the division of the sausage, then panic when they hear a rustle in the woods and begin to think of murder.

Productions

First staged at Scarborough in June 1992, [1] the play was subsequently produced at the Apollo Theatre in the West End in October 1994, [2] with Jeremy Sams as director and the following cast:

The play was revived at Chichester in 2013, then staged at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in October 2014. [3]

Film

A television film was screened on 4 June 1998, [4] directed by Terry Johnson, with the following cast:

Reception

The play was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1995. [5] Michael Billington, writing in The Guardian in 2014, claimed that it showed the influence of Alan Ayckbourn, reminding him of Way Upstream . He also suggested that it had "some of the facile pessimism of Lord of the Flies ", but for him the men's "descent into savagery stretches credulity". [3]

Notes

  1. 'Theatre Week' The Stage, 11 June 1992, p.12
  2. 'Production News', The Stage, 29 September 1994, p. 42
  3. 1 2 Michael Billington, "Neville’s Island review – descent into savagery stretches credulity", The Guardian , 21 October 2014, accessed 14 July 2024
  4. Harry Venning, 'Television Review', The Stage, 11 June 1998, p. 25
  5. "Olivier Awards, 1995", olivierawards.com, accessed 14 July 2024