edinburgh

Big Spirit Theatre has brought their own adaptation of the William Golding’s novel to the Fringe, and it is successful in that it modernises the plot without distracting from the key themes of the text. The characters are still stranded on an island after a plane crash, but they are modern school children who make leadership decisions with regards to sports teams, have a whistle instead of a conch - and there are even girls thrown into the mix.

William Golding’s classic novel slightly adjusted for modern times

The words ‘contemporary adaptation’ can send shivers down a reviewer’s spine, especially when the source material is one of the 20th century’s finest literary works. Thankfully, Big Spirit Youth Theatre’s reworking of William Golding’s 1954 novel doesn’t take too many liberties, instead just answering some questions about what would happen if a group of school kids got stranded on a desert island today. In other words, the youngsters involved do have mobile phones (unfortunately useless when surrounded by the ocean), but at no point do they say, ‘OMFG look its a massiv monster innit, lol x’.

William Golding's famous story THE LORD OF THE FLIES is updated and given the Big Spirit Theatre Company treatment this year at the worlds biggest arts festival.

Big Spirit regularly send productions to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and have scored some notable successes over the years:

1992: Teechers, by John Godber

1996: The Drowned and the Saved, by Primo Levi

1997: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

1998: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

1999: Beautiful Thing, by Jonathan Harvey

2009: Teechers, by John Godber

2010: Rent

2011: Lord of the flies, Wiliam Golding