A stunning leap from page to stage
Treasure Island (out of 4) Written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Adapted by Nicolas Billon. Directed by Mitchell Cushman. Until Oct. 22 at the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St., Stratford. stratfordfestival.ca or 1-800-567-1600
The adventure begins in the lobby. Any pint-sized theatregoer who attends Treasure Island at the Stratford Festival is armed with a treasure map before taking their seats, their tickets taken by ushers in red and blue bandanas tied around their heads.
Some lucky young landlubbers even get to take a peek before the play begins through a special telescope onstage which, according to the program notes, uses virtual reality to transform the theatre into the edge of the sea (not meeting the age requirements, we didn’t get to try this ourselves).
These are interactive elements that director Mitchell Cushman adds to the festival’s annual Schulich Children’s Play, having built his career in Toronto indie theatre with a focus on immersive and site-specific productions ( Terminus and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play for example). Pairing Cushman with children’s theatre is a natural move for the festival, since immersion and interaction are paramount for young audiences — especially when the playwright adapting Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure tale is Nicolas Billon, writer of hits such as Iceland and Butcher.
There are moments of surprise and delight in this production, which follows young Jim Hawkins (Thomas Mitchell Barnet), the honourable Dr. Diana Livesey (Sarah Dodd), Captain Smollett (Jim Codrington), Squire Trelawney (a clownish Randy Hughson), the crafty cook Long John Silver (Juan Chioran) and a crew of swarthy swashbucklers who set out to sea in search of the lost treasure of Captain Flint.
First of all, Billon frames the play through the dreams of James (Barnet), whose father (Chioran) reads Treasure Island to him at night (as Cushman’s own father did to him as a child), which leads to a satisfying and moving conclusion.
Visual tricks and gags — toy rowboats travelling along a wire across the stage, a dramatic costume change from the pirates (costume design by Charlotte Dean) and using dodgeballs as cannon balls — get a rise out of the audience. Billon also includes a few clever references for the adults, drawing from other pieces of classic literature.
And an especially entertaining move was to cast actor and aerial artist Katelyn McCulloch as the marooned Ben Gunn, who traverses treetops and vines like a more inquisitive, and cheese-obsessed, Tarzan.
(Billon also has female actors play female characters instead of keeping the world of Treasure Island exclusively male.)
However, in cramming the novel into play length while making room for technical elements and audience interaction the plot gets lost at sea.
The several times that Jim, his allies and the pirates travel back and forth from the island blend into each other, until it’s unclear who’s where and what the plan is. It’s easy to see why young audience members love the battle scenes; it’s much more difficult to imagine they’re able to keep up with their purpose.
There’s evidently been much care used in fitting as much of the original story as possible into the play, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel thrown overboard.