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Yer swash needs buckling
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes

Treasure Island
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

I relish it when a theatre company has the guts to eviscerate a classic. 

In Warsaw in 1990 I saw a Polish production of Chekhov’s The Seagull that reduced the play to deckchairs, extended pauses and daft symbolism in a witty and absurdist act of cultural vandalism. It was a brilliant East European engagement with things Russian and the deconstruction worked because the audience shared the sense of purpose with which it was done.

What of things Scottish?

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