“TREASURE ISLAND”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 25

“TREASURE ISLAND”

Stevenson’s Romance Still Thrills Londoners POPULAR REVIVAL “Treasure Island,” adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s story by James Fagan, has enjoyed an excellent run in London. The critic of “The Times” says of the production: That you will see Robert Loraine astride a rum keg. cleansing his blood-stained knife upon the still warm body of poor Tom and chanting softly to himself: With one man of the crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five, 1 is a sufficient reason for visiting the Strand Theatre. For Mr. Loraine is

j Long John Silver magnificently j genial, sanctimonious and picturesque, as naturally cruel as he is strong and | quick. ; He v-as with Flint at Malabar. Flint his own sell’ was feared of him, and he saw the Walrus, Flint’s oid ship, “a’muclt with red blood and fit to sink with gold.” So he says, and jwe do not doubt this man’s word, though we may be puzzled by his manifest failure to turn a string of oaths into a roar of intimidation; but; assuredly, before the run is over the I roar will come and the theatre will' ring with it. Fate (we feel) meets out hard measure when it permits such a man as this Silver to be humbled by a whipper-snapper like Jim Hawkins. But when the end is in sight, w-ith

| what adroitness, and even dignity, he contrives to lay his course ‘a p’nt to windward” and round Execution Dock! Stevenson would have approved Mr. Loraine’s sea-cook ar almost certainly he would have approved this stage version of his story. From the running to earth of Billy Bones at the “Admiral Benbow” inn to the voice wailing “Darby McGraw” from the thickets on Spy-glass Shoulder every scene of importance is here. No need to consult our memories of the book at any point; the play tells the story as if Stevenson, when he wrote it, had worked it out in a toy theatre. Mr. Fagan’s adaptation is almost as rich a distillation of pirate romance as the book itself.