Treasure Island at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh – review

Every December, while the panto behemoth powers on at the other side of town, Edinburgh’s other main Christmas show makes the sensible decision to do something completely different. The Royal Lyceum Theatre’s Christmas plays tend to avoid anything that’s too explicitly festive in favour of a fresh take on a family-friendly tale. They fill it with local colour and make a (largely unconvincing) attempt to set it in midwinter, but otherwise, it’s a fairly straight play to which you can happily take the kids.

Hence this year’s show, a Treasure Island that’s unlike any other you’ll have seen. Duncan McLean adapts Robert Louis Stephenson’s story to take place in Leith, Edinburgh’s port district, and the island on which Flint’s treasure is buried turns out to be in Orkney. One of the characters has gone Christmas shopping as the show opens, and there’s a final chorus celebrating the season as they put up the fairy lights, so all the elements are in place.

Aside from the setting, McLean’s biggest innovation is to tell Stephenson’s tale as a story within a story. The action opens at the Admiral Benbow Home for Reformed Pirates, run by Jim Hawkins and his mum. The residents have found a new life where neither swashbuckling nor pirate shenanigans are allowed, and beards are strictly forbidden because “pirate beards make folk feel afeard.” But they are clearly struggling to put their pirating ways behind them, and to scratch their itch, Jim leads them through their own re-enactment of the Treasure Island tale.

The cast of only six thus put on a play for their own entertainment as well as for ours, and it gives the show an energetic sense of being improvised on the spot. The only trouble is that when Stephenson’s story gets going, it’s strangely devoid of magic. In Wils Wilson’s production, the stage is big and mostly bare, and there are times when the actors struggle to fill it. Worse, there are moments where McLean’s script is unfocused and unhelpfully chaotic so that there are parts of act two when it’s not at all clear what’s going on.

Alongside this, there are some oddly flat points where nothing much happens, such as a prolonged cooking episode and a strangely static opening scene involving handbells and a light bulb. The songs, in particular, hold up the action badly, and don’t contain enough earworms to make the trade-off worth it.

It’s odd to see a show where the framing device is more persuasive than the actual story. The cast does a good enough job with the material, though even they seem happier in the retirement home than on the island. Jade Chan’s Jim is energetic, and Amy Conachan makes the most of being Lean Jean Silver. The best of the rest of the ensemble is Dylan Read, who plays a suite of other characters with stacks of energy, including a Glaswegian Blind Pew and a strangely convincing puffin. All of this is entertaining enough to keep the ship afloat, but ultimately this Treasure Island lacks heart where it’s needed most.