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1. Norwich Theatre Royal

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Treasure Island - Billy Bones/Israel Hands

- Norwich Theatre Royal. Directed by Terry Gilbert.

A cracking production of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, as adapted by Bernard Miles for the Mermaid Theatre. We had a great Long John Silver in Godfrey Jackman, partnered by the incredible Louis the parrot, a bird who effortlessly stole the show and hammed it up more outrageously than any of the human cast. We shared a dressing-room, and he was a fascinating conversationalist...

The fight director on this show was Derek Ware, one of the country's top stunt arrangers. His battle scenes were amazing with shotguns, muskets and cannon, but his real 'coup de theatre' was the second act fight between myself as Israel Hands and Steve Wilsher as O'Brian.

The fight lasted a full ten minutes (bear in mind that on stage a two-minute fight is considered long) and was loosely based on a cartoon idea of using weapons of ever increasing size and lethality. So we started with a fist-fight, progressed to knives, then to coshes, barrels, cutlasses, axes and finally Steve threw a boathook the full width of the stage to stick, quivering, in the wooden set where I had been standing a second before dodging out the way. Then I cut his head off with an axe, held it up, dripping and surprised, and threw it into the wings.

As you do.

The fight progressed in true Warner Bros. cartoon fashion by each of us getting disarmed in turn by the other, panicking, and grabbing up the first weapon that came to hand (always bigger than the one before) with hideous chuckles of triumph, only for the situation to reverse itself a few moments later. It was REALLY good fun, though incredibly tiring, and the audience lapped it up. Some of the rest of the cast took to appearing in the wings for the fight every night to see what new embellishment had been added, and as the run progressed we did add further refinements, including a 'mouth full of polo-mints' spitting out teeth gag that got longer and longer and longer... until both of us cracked up one night and burst out laughing at the absurdity of it.

The two local boys who played Jim Hawkins alternately were excellent, and among the strong cast John Fryatt's Ben Gunn was a standout.

"The second half provided an excellently-staged fight-scene between a couple of suitably disreputable pirates..."