In the 70 years since the publication of Lords of the Flies it’s been a staple on the national curriculum as young readers have been entranced by schoolchildren going feral on a desert island.
Leeds Playhouse’s Deputy Artistic Director Amy Leach is directing a new version of William Goldman’s classic study of human nature as Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon and Roger battle to survive, or just stay alive.
“We often think about Lord of the Flies as a reaction to the Second World War, but when I came back to the story as an adult, I realised it’s actually set against a background of nuclear war – a war of the future,” says Amy Leach.
“It felt important to embrace that by setting it now, to find a new and interesting way to restage a classic story and make it connect with audiences in 2023.”
The bestial mayhem the children cause in their own little world seem eerily similar to our current planetary chaos where children are fleeing war zones, families are being separated and power is all too often an unequal commodity.
“What really interested me in retelling Lord of the Flies was the opportunity it provided to look at the world we are creating for our young people, the lessons we are teaching them, and how their experiences are shaping them.
“In our production, the children are being evacuated from a war zone. The world is in chaos, and they’re left to fend for themselves on this island. I’m interested in how the world they have come from impacts on how they behave on the island, how the hierarchy develops, how they re-enact the things they’ve learned from adults.”
“The world we live in is brutal and dark and, I hope, also full of joy, but we can’t hide away from the things we see on the news every day. I’m a parent of an 11-year-old who’s just started high school and I’m really conscious of the world he’s witnessing and how I can help him make good decisions in a similar way that Ralph is asked to do at the centre of Lord of the Flies.”
In the original novel and older film and stage versions of the story, the castaways were a group of privileged white boys. In Leach’s typically bold version she has rightly made a choice to reflect the world we live in now, and critically the audiences who come to see it.
“We’ve really considered the diversity of our cast, thinking about all those young people – many of whom will be studying the book at school – who will be coming to see the play and will relish seeing themselves reflected in the world of the story,” notes Leach.
“It’s forced us to look again at the story, to question it through a contemporary lens. This isn’t just something that’s happened in the past. it’s something that’s still happening now and will continue to happen. We can choose how we live our lives, and Lord of the Flies clearly shows us the consequences of those choices.”
And those choices, good and bad, are made on an eerie island set that changes and shifts throughout the play to reflect the mood of its inhabitants.
“Staging a play is a very different medium to writing a novel, Leach insists. “A novel comes alive in our minds, while a play is a living, breathing, 3D experience with real humans connecting with a real audience.
“Inevitably, we’ve had to make some changes to the geography of the island. We can’t push giant boulders off great heights in the theatre so there are some practical choices that have had to be made. But there is a sense of abstract fear in the book that we can retain and enhance on stage, building this sense of the beast – the Lord of the Flies – as a conceptual as well as a very real threat.”
Not surprisingly, given the material, Leach is directing a young cast, and some have only recently graduated.
“The way they inhabit their characters, their physicality, the way they work together in the world we are creating – I can’t wait to see them on stage and feel their connection to the audience. They are all owning the space and telling the story, reclaiming it for themselves, for now.”
Lord of the Flies is in Quarry theatre, Leeds Playhouse from 18th March – 8th April. Book online at www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk or 0113 213 7700.