Treasure Island (Le Navet Bete stage version)

By John Nicholson and Le Navet Bete

Fourteen-year-old Jim Hawkins is serving ale in The Admiral Benbow Inn – when suddenly the door slams open and in strides Billy Bones, the infamous pirate, to change Jim’s life forever…

Soon, Jim finds himself on board The Jolly Todger and setting sail on the high seas. Alongside him, the crew includes Captain Birdseye, Black Dog, Blue Peter, the one-legged Long John Silver, and a parrot called Alexa – and their destination: a mysterious tropical paradise in the Caribbean named Treasure Island. Or Skeleton Island. Depends who you ask.

This riotously chaotic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved Treasure Island is a collaboration between John Nicholson (The Hound of the Baskervilles) and the physical-comedy theatre company Le Navet Bete, with their four actors playing dozens of characters.

Following the company’s hilarious, hit adaptations of Dracula: The Bloody Truth and The Three Musketeers, it premiered at the Plymouth Athenaeum in 2019, and in a Black Spot-defying production at the Exeter Northcott Theatre in 2020, before touring nationally.

If you’re looking for a rip-roaring, swashbuckling, family-friendly retelling of a classic story to perform with your theatre company or drama group, then X marks this spot.

‘A ripping good yarn with an abundance of theatrical surprises’The Stage

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Dec 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788503518

John Nicholson

Professor John Nicholson PhD DSc, leads the Biomaterials Group in the School of Sport, Health and Applied Science, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London, UK. He is a materials scientist with over thirty years’ experience researching, lecturing and publishing on aesthetic repair materials for teeth. He developed the widely used classification for modern repair materials, and has published over 170 original scientific papers in this field. He is a former President of the UK Society for Biomaterials.