Neville’s Island
The Duke of York’s, London
17/11/2014
What excitement I felt when I knew I was about to see Neville’s Island, staring comedy greats such as Adrian Edmondson, Miles Jupp, Neil Morrissey and Robert Webb.All known for their influence on British culture, I was sure that a comedy performance was in store.
The story of Neville’s Island saw four business men, shipwrecked on a work’s team building exercise. The story embarks on the foursome’s hunger, fears and conflict with one another. We see four very different individuals, and as the show unfolds, different significant stories of each person is revealed.
The main source of comedy was seen in the angst and anger of Edmondson’s character, inflicting insults upon the apparent stupidity of the other character’s in the scenario. This proved many laughs and was helped by the minimal acting of the other’s in retaliation; later building into each burst of madness that they experience as survival begins to be a struggle.
There were times of slapstick comedy, using the very well constructed and realised set of trees, rubble and real water at the front of the stage. Audience members near the front were even given rain macs with the knowledge that this water became a element to some of the comedy gold on stage.
However, I wouldn’t call this production ‘side splitting’. These little moments created hysterical laughter but were far and few between. It felt that more activity was needed on stage to compensate for quiet moments where the comedy did not quite hit the funny bone. While each actor was fantastic in their performance and execution and couldn’t be faulted, the content wasn’t enough for them to truly show their comedic skills and left myself wanting more.