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There are more photos from this production below. Selecting any of the small thumbnail images will show a larger version of the picture in the main part of the page. »

Neville's Island by Tim Firth - Neville

- Northcott Theatre, Exeter. Directed by Richard Osborne.

Great play. Good cast and director. Lovely to be back at the Northcott. Good Christ, what an uncomfortable experience, though! The play (as its title suggests) takes place on an island in Derwentwater, where four out of condition, middle aged businessmen sent off on a team-building exercise in the Lake District have succeeded in being the first people ever to get shipwrecked there. Fog-bound, isolated and menaced by unspecified wild-life as well as their own incompetence and stupidity, the party descends into a hilarious Lord of the Flies scenario that culminates in madness, violence and the desperate eating of water-logged pizza.

The island was beautifully recreated on the large Northcott stage, wreathed in dry-ice fog and surrounded on all sides by water a foot deep, water that became increasingly stagnant and fetid (despite regular chlorination) as the run went on. And we were first glimpsed crawling through the water up on to the beach. At first the novelty of stepping, fully-clothed, into a shower for a couple of minutes before taking the stage was enough to counter the sheer discomfort of spending three hours in clammy, sand-impregnated, damp clothing. But that novelty very soon wore off, and I grew to dread the performances, not for the play - which is excellent - nor for the other cast members - who were terrific - but simply for the awful inevitability of those wet clothes and the stinky water. What a wuss!

So I was quite glad when the run came to an end, despite the fact that the production was well-received and otherwise a pretty happy experience.

"Jon Glentoran conveys well the inadequacies of the chosen leader..."

"Jon Glentoran as Neville gives a well-rounded character..."