Uproariously funny Le Navet Bete production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island full of ‘oops’ moments
Le Navet Bete Treasure Island
at the Oxford Playhouse
on Friday, July 4, and Saturday
By JON LEWIS
and ESZTI JOHNSON (aged 10)
IT’S often the way that the funniest scenes in a play are the unscripted ‘oops’ moments that emerge after something unexpected happens. John Nicholson’s uproariously funny Le Navet Bete production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is full of such scenes.
Matt Freeman steals multiple scenes, not just when he falls out of a flip-flop. Playing the pirate Blue Peter, dressed in a stripy blue crop top and the tightest of shorts, he’s a natural clown. After the interval he’s the cheese-dreaming castaway Ben Gunn, so desperate for cheese he scoffs a baby bel without removing the red skin first. Throughout the play he’s the puppeteer for the parrot, Alexa, delivering multiple running gags based on Alexa delivering misheard internet surfing requests.
The lead character Jim (Nick Bunt) is the straight man in the cast, the Wise to everyone else’s Morecambe. The story is seen through his eyes with multiple jokes emerging from his Bristolian naivety. Having killed off his aunt by mistake and winning a ship in a brilliantly conceived spoof of the TV game show Play Your Cards Right (involving a rather bemused member of the front row), he sets off on an adventure with a crew of pirates.
The bearded, long-haired Silver (Al Dunn) is essentially a kind-hearted villain. He is afraid of the mysterious Raven (Simon Burbage) who, unknown to the others, is disguised as Captain Birdseye, forever offering Jim one of his fish fingers. The cast are a superbly comic foursome, confidently belting out their version of In the Navy by the Village People in one very silly scene.
Eszti writes: The play was hilarious, entrancing and thrilling. My favourite character is Blue Peter. He is hilarious when he was pretending to be a gambler’s assistant, and when he fell over and forgot all of his lines for the first time. It was very funny when The Raven hypnotised Blue Peter with the song When The Boat Comes in. I liked how the stage was formed into a boat shape. The only thing I didn’t like was we never found out what the black spot on the handkerchief was.
