reviews

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’.