Treasure Island Paperback ? September 14, 2021

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.

John Nicholson is a writer, director, and performer. He is Co-Artistic Director of Peepolykus, with whom he has toured throughout the UK and worldwide since 1995. As a writer, his work includes: King Arthur (Le Navet Bete, 2024); The Time Machine, co-written with Steven Canny (Original Theatre, 2023); Treasure Island (Le Navet Bete, 2019); Dracula: The Bloody Truth (Le Navet Bete, 2017); The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary, co-written with Javier Marzan for Peepolykus (Liverpool Everyman, 2016); and The Hound of the Baskervilles, co-written with Steven Canny for Peepolykus (West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2007). He has also written extensively for BBC Radio, including Richard’s Rampage, and the four-part series Trespasser’s Guide to the Classics (2015).

Le Navet Bete is a physical-comedy theatre company based in Exeter, Devon, whose spectacular and hilarious shows have wowed audiences globally since their formation in 2007.