William Golding’s iconic novel The Lord of the Flies is perhaps one of the most potent literary works of the twentieth century, both for its powerful and disturbing depiction of the dark underside of civilisation and for the sheer range of interpretations it has produced. Like George Orwell’s Animal Farm it is a superbly dark critique of social and political structures, its story of a bunch of children stranded on an island and turning savage providing a chilling microcosm of the world at large. The key theme of the fundamentally evil nature of humanity marked Golding out as a pessimist.

After their plane crashes, killing all of the adults, a group of children struggle to survive on an idyllic island, forming into ever shifting factions. Principally they fall into two groups: those who follow Jack (Mark Knightly), who represents totalitarianism; and those who side with Ralph (Davood Ghadami), who stands for democracy and pacifism. Ironically the children, who are being sent away from impending war in Europe, end up enacting that war upon the island. Once removed from society even ‘innocent’ children quickly descend into brutality, a process that questions the validity and stability of those social structures in the first place. The whole notion of rules is revealed to be as fragile and ridiculous as the conch shell that the children desperately cling onto as a symbol of authority throughout; a mere talisman that is finally strewn upon the stage by Jack, who begins the play as a middle-class choir leader and prefect, but falls most easily to his primitive impulses, smearing his body with pigs blood.

Pilot Theatre company, well known for their edgy and energetic reworkings of classic texts, have produced an adaptation that relishes in picking out the morbid themes of the novel, marrying them to a confrontational modern aesthetic of Tarantino-esque violence. This is full-on in-your-face theatre, something most evident from the gory scene involving the rather brilliant prop of a dead boar, the blood of which is used to ‘baptise’ the children.     

The New Wolsey’s modest stage is occupied by the mangled wreckage of the crashed plane, the wing of which is mounted on a pivot allowing for some impressive stage work and acrobatics – at one point the wing even becomes a tipping cliff down which the unfortunate Piggy (Dominic Doughty), the fat asthmatic scapegoat of the group, tumbles. This is one play you wont be falling asleep at, mainly because it is very good, but also because the cast take every opportunity to clang their spears on the plane’s broken fuselage and scream out primitive chants as their characters slip further into madness, all accompanied by a weird ambient techno soundtrack.

Lord of the Flies is reprised here by the company after its debut ten years ago, this time with a slightly older cast and a fresh conviction that their play is growing more relevant by the year. As artistic director Marcus Romer says: “in our world of hyperconnectivity it is important to remember that isolation and exclusion are as prevalent now as when Golding put pen to paper over fifty years ago.”