When adapting Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island to the stage, how do you make this hoary old classic new? For playwright Bryony Lavery, the answer was simple: Turn its hero into a girl. So her Jim Hawkins is now an innkeeper’s granddaughter who gets swept up in a sea adventure, and the play becomes a proto-Goth feminist coming-of-age story without losing any of Stevenson’s swashbuckling flash. The play caused a sensation when it opened a few months ago in London’s West End, and now you can see a broadcast of that performance at National Theatre Live.
The main effect of the gender flip is to give all sorts of new undercurrents to the relationship between Jim (Patsy Ferran) and Long John Silver (Arthur Darvill, from TV’s Doctor Who and Broadchurch), here presented as less of a fearsome sea dog and more of a charmer who takes a possibly unhealthy interest in Jim. Usually Amphibian Productions’ National Theatre Live broadcasts are only on Wednesdays, but this time they’re including an extra broadcast on Saturday so more families can see this subversive take on a classic.
[box_info]Treasure Island shows at 2pm & 7pm Wed and 1pm Sat at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Tickets are $12-20. Call 817-923-3012.[/box_info]
