I’d been very worried that the weather would ruin our evening at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre tonight but thankfully we arrived at the park to this …

… and thankfully conditions stayed pretty much like that for the rest of the evening.

The Open Air Theatre was a very fitting venue for tonight’s Lord of the Flies theatre performance. The outdoor element of the theatre really emphasised the island feel and though I couldn’t quite say that I felt like I was only the island with them (we were sitting too far away for that! Side note: Great tapering on the seats!) it certainly felt like we were perhaps sitting on a boat not too far from shore. Heh heh.

The set was quite awesome to be honest. They’d even dragged on what seemed like to be the back part of the plane but could have equally been a cleverly built set. I love the luggage strewn all over the ground and clothes up in the trees. And for a set which really couldn’t take too much the production crew did well to transport us from one part of the island to another with just a few changes in the scenery and where the cast members were standing.

Most people are pretty familiar with the story behind Lord of the Flies and it’s a rare person (Laney being one of them!) who has neither studied the book at school nor seen any of the film adaptations with the 1990 version starring Balthazar Getty being the most recent. In contrast with Laney I both studied and the book and saw the movie! The basic story is that a group of British school boys are stranded on a deserted island who have to learn to survive, and more importantly, learn to govern themselves. It’s a commentary on human nature and the effect of selfishness versus the greater good. The dark themes are strong in this one.

There was some very decent character acting by the kids who displayed a certain amount of maturity in their acting that I was quite surprised by. The play is also very physical requiring the young actors to run and leap absolutely everywhere. And they all handled it with aplomb. The other unexpected element of the play was the number of musical scenes which involved much music, dancing and chanting. Along with the lighting it really added to the menacing tone over the overall play. Very well choreographed.

An all around fantastic evening of theatre.