Stage review: Lord of Flies

Regent’s Park Theatre’s production arrived in Bradford’s Alhambra trailing a string of five star reviews in its wake, and for the most part it lived up to (high) expections.

Following a plane crash, a group of boys struggle to govern themselves and survive on an uninhabited island, gradually descending into savagery. The young ensemble cast, several of whom are making their professional debuts, give accomplished performances with robust charactersations. And they can’t be faulted for their energy levels – there are a number of slick, well-choroegraphed fight sequences (complete with slo-mo effects).

Some of the subtlety of Golding’s novel is, perhaps necessarily, lost but the script finds room to include plenty of 21st century references – the boys pose for a selfie at one point, they make cracks about Bear Grylls and Ant and Dec – which obviously appealed to the enthusiastic school parties in the audience.

Luke Ward-Wilkinson as Ralph and Freddie Watkins as Jack portray the power struggle between the two would-be ‘chiefs’ convincingly, while Anthony Roberts as Piggy is the (Yorkshire-accented) voice of reason.

The running time felt a little longer than it needed to be (it is a relatively short book) but that’s a minor criticism in an otherwise very impressive show.

To March 5.