Who is the protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure story? The obvious answer is Jim Hawkins, the innkeeper’s son who is drawn into a high-seas escapade complete with piracy and plundering. One minute he is helping with the customers, the next he is setting sail in search of buried treasure. But what of Long John Silver? Might not the double-crossing cook who leads a mutiny from the ship’s galley also have a claim to being the central player? After all, Stevenson’s original title was The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys.
It is a dispute that spills into Duncan McLean’s spirited adaptation of the 1883 novel, as Amy Conachan, styled as Lean Jean Silver, argues for primacy over Jade Chan as Jim. But it is Jim who wins out. He is in charge of the Admiral Benbow Home for Reformed Pirates (at least until his mum gets back) and has the final say.
First, though, he must concede that such a riotous story can be told at all. The home, which has rules against beards and swashbuckling, is wary about the insurrectionary power of literature and does not want to give the retired pirates ideas.
Thus, in Wils Wilson’s production, Treasure Island is a tale that grows out of the bric-a-brac of a care home. On Alex Berry’s amorphous set, the residents co-opt a tea trolley, washtub and step ladder to tell a story that starts in Leith, where Lean Jean Silver runs a pie stall, and culminates not in the Caribbean but on a deserted Orkney island.
Ropes tumble down to form the outline of a ship on a sepia sea. Held horizontally, they become waves battering a cardboard vessel beneath a full moon. Meanwhile composer Tim Dalling, who also plays a deranged Ben Gunn, leads the cast in a sea-shanty skiffle forged with similar resourcefulness from accordion, double-bass and cooking pots.
With TJ Holmes as a preposterous Laird of Leith, Itxaso Moreno as a threatening Billy Bones and Dylan Read winning hearts with a puppet puffin, it is a buoyant family show with an anarchic spirit and a delight in the power of the imagination.
• At Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 4 January
