Neville's Island (play)
Neville's Island is a comedy play for stage and screen by Tim Firth, first staged at Scarborough in 1994.
The action takes place in November on a small island in Derwentwater, with four British business men 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. 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 a sausage, then panic when they hear a rustle in the woods and begin to think of murder.
Productions
First staged at Scarborough in 1994, the play proceeded to the Apollo Theatre in the West End in the same year.[1] It was revived at Chichester in 2013, and the new production was staged at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in October 2014.[2]
Film
A television film was produced in 1998, directed by Terry Johnson, with the following cast:
- Martin Clunes as Roy
- Timothy Spall as Gordon
- Jeff Rawle as Neville
- David Bamber as Angus
Reception
The play was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1995.[3] Michael Billington, writing in The Guardian in 2014, found that the play showed the influence Alan Ayckbourn, reminding him of Way Upstream. He also suggests that it "inherits some of the facile pessimism of Lord of the Flies". But for him the men's "descent into savagery stretches credulity".[2]
Notes
- ^ "Neville's Island - Review", londontheatre.co.uk, undated, accessed 14 July 2024
- ^ a b Michael Billington, "Neville’s Island review – descent into savagery stretches credulity", The Guardian, 21 October 2014, accessed 14 July 2024
- ^ "Olivier Awards, 1995", olivierawards.com, accessed 14 July 2024