Neville’s Island becomes Sheila’s Island in new version
Do you remember Neville’s Island? Well, for Neville now read Sheila as the female version hits the road.
The UK tour of Sheila’s Island features Olivier Award winner Sara Crowe (Private Lives, Aldwych Theatre; Calendar Girls the Musical, UK Tour and West End; Four Weddings and a Funeral), Eastern Eye Award winner Rina Fatania (Waking/ Walking, Kiln Theatre; Dead Dog in a Suitcase, UK and international tour), Judy Flynn (The Brittas Empire, BBC; Dinnerladies, BBC) and Abigail Thaw (Endeavour, ITV). The tour will be at Brighton Theatre Royal from April 19-23.
It’s Bonfire night 2019 and Sheila, Denise, Julie, and
Fay are Team C in Pennine Mineral Water Ltd’s annual outward bound teambuilding weekend. Somehow marketing manager Sheila has been nominated team leader and, using her cryptic crossword solving skills, has unwittingly stranded her team on an island in the Lake District. As the mobile batteries die, and cold and hunger take over, the women find themselves called on to manufacture escape routes using cable ties and spatulas and create a rescue flag with plastic plates and a toasting fork. Questions are asked; truths are told; dirty washing is aired. Can Sheila keep tempers from fraying, nails from breaking and get her band of top-level executives safely back to shore?
Abigail Thaw and the rest of the company are enjoying the audience response so far.
“We have actually been travelling with it for a while and it is going really well. We’ve got a pond and there are a lot of live props and people are really enjoying it.
“It is great to get back to the theatre.
“It is pretty much the same as Neville’s Island. (Playwright) Tim (Firth) didn’t really have to change that much actually but it’s now called Sheila’s Island and it’s about four women. But it has transferred really well. You realise that it’s basically just about human nature and what happens to people when they’re stuck on an island on this executive training weekend and how they cope or not.”
You might imagine that the women might perhaps cope rather better than their male counterparts did in the show’s original incarnation but Abigail is not so sure: “I don’t think that you can generalise to that extent. There’s still quite a lot of incompetency around here!
“I am playing Denise and she is a bit of a bully. I don’t want to give too much away but she thinks she knows it all and perhaps she doesn’t know quite as much she thinks she did does.
“Tim came to the rehearsals. He was there at the very beginning of the run and I think we’re going to be seeing him again. I had never seen the play Neville’s Island but I had watched the TV film but this is actually really quite different. But the great thing is that the audience has been lovely. We’ve had standing ovations. Some people are still having to wear masks and it’s not that easy for everyone but the audience reaction has been great.”
And the joy is to be emerging from the lockdown: “I had a year’s worth of work wiped out. We were supposed to be doing this at the beginning of the lockdown. We were doing publicity and then we all had to shut down. This has been two years in the making.
“I did a bit for Netflix and I did various things including a lot of voice-over work.
“I was always optimistic that we would be getting back but just to be doing this at the moment feels really lovely.”
“There have been repercussions in so many different ways and at different levels but the pandemic at the time was a chance to relax a bit at home. One of my daughters was in Jordan at the time and that was worrying but it was also a time for reflection. I think that my appreciation of theatre is now much more that people really do need it. We need that human connection.”