TREASURE ISLAND National Theatre

Pirates can usually be relied on to provide excitement and the National has produced excellent entertainment for family audiences in the past; but, unfortunately, their version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure story is as dead as the proverbial parrot. Jim Hawkins has been turned into a girl. It might have been more interesting to have cast an actress as Long John Silver; not as a drag act but in the tradition of those real-life female pirates of the 18th century, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Arthur Darvill, naturally, does not want to imitate Robert Newton, the definitive Silver, a chronic alcoholic with rolling eyes and grinding voice; but Brony Lavery’s poor adaptation does not give him any opportunities to develop his effete interpretation.