Neville’s Island

Four middle management businessmen from Salford get marooned on an island on Derwent Water during a team building exercise. If you ignore the fact that the plot is full of holes (why on earth do they not concentrate on finding a way to signal to shore?) and suspend your belief, then you’re in for a jolly good time, because it really is very funny indeed. Much of this is down to the superb cast, John Marquez and Tim Macmillan are hilarious as the eponymous Neville and OCD crazed and delusional Angus. Adrian Edmondson does what he does best as the increasingly aggressive Gordon, but it is Rufus Hound who steals the day with the beautifully played role of Roy, damaged by bereavement and by faith.

Full marks too for a superb set, with rain again, from Robert Innes Hopkins and beautiful lighting by Howard Harrison. Chichester love to flood a stage but this time it was really worthwhile and the damp atmosphere of a truly grim Lakeland weekend is perfectly conveyed as the drizzle comes and goes but the water continues to fall from the island copse, a huddle of dripping trees. And details is everywhere, from the Westmoreland slate boulders at the water’s edge to the mad survival equipment in Angus’s rucksack, which they fail to either discover or use to any great effect.

As a study of the psyche of middle management it’s not particularly sharp, but as a study of men in general thrown into an alien world it is hilariously insightful.

Chichester Festival Theatre In The Park, 21 September 2013

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