Carry on in paradise

Pitcairn

Malvern Theatres

**

THERE'S nothing more disappointing than when a good idea for a play manages to miss the point and sully it with unnecessary salaciousness.

Pitcairn performed by the Chichester Festival Theatre is unfortunately that.

It's a story based on the island of Pitcairn where mutineers from The Bounty have settled after hijacking a group of Polynesian women and men to be their wives and workhands respectively.

What starts off delving into the utopia of equality that senior officer Fletcher Christian hopes and fails to create with his ship hands quickly divulges into unnecessary swearing and eroticism.

Rather than the play being a clever look at power struggles, as in Lord of the Flies, it becomes centred purely around sex.

There's dances with dildos, women constantly talking about different sexual positions and a grotesque rape scene.

It was more like an X-rated Carry On Up The Pitcairn than the intelligent, thought-provoking drama it had the potential to be.

It was a shame because there were poignant moments that gave an insight into how each of these different sections of society brought to the island would have felt.

Moments like why Polynesian women were willing to sleep with English sailors in order to get an iron nail or the irony of ship hands wanting to get rid of hierarchies on the island, but not when it came to Polynesians.

The young cast was enthusiastic but that could not compensate for the tedious smut and I ended up counting down the minutes for it to be over. Disappointing. To 22-11-14

Alison Brinkworth

18-11-14 

 

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