You might think that anyone who admires William Golding’s tremendous story as much as Marcus Romer claims to do would find much to dislike in Pilot Theatre’s touring production. But strangely enough it is Romer who is the artistic director of the company, and director of this noisy, fragmentary stage version of the book. Nigel Williams did the adaptation, and in various revised forms it has been touring for the past ten years.

The present tour continues well into 2009, and in January they will be performing in Bermuda, where at least the tropical surroundings will be real, unlike what the audience sees on the stage, bare except for two chunks of a crashed aeroplane. If it were not for the plastic strips at the back, shimmering with blue light to suggest the sea, we could be inside an aircraft hangar.

Romer goes for exuberant physicality. There are moments of calm, and a few where the characters engage without uttering snarls of contempt, rage or war cries. There are even a couple of occasions when Ralph (Davood Ghadami) sits still and remembers a happier life in comforting Devonshire, but these attempts at deepening his character are so out of keeping with the prevailing uproar that they come across as unreal, even inappropriate – which is an amazing response, considering how subtly Golding revealed the characters’ uncertainties and sense of loss.

Also, how gradually he did so. Here everything happens crash! bang! from the start, with the tyrannical Jack lusting for blood at the first meeting, swiftly snuffing out Piggy’s pathetic attempts at democracy. War paint is worn that first night, hunts and deaths follow swiftly and rescue comes before anyone cooks, let alone eats, the first pig. It’s all too slick, too eager to pack the time with war dances, hunt dances and fire dances, lest the audience, predominantly school age, turn their minds off.

Interplay between the characters works best when Mark Knightley’s Jack is bullying his tribe and his followers cower at the end of his spear. Knightley’s brief hesitation before thrusting his fingers into the dead pig is also a convincing moment of squeamishness overcome. Golding never mentions Piggy’s actual name, and it is a pity that his memory of interwar politics prevented him giving democracy a firmer voice than Piggy’s whine. Dominic Doughty gives us the voice that Golding probably wanted but it does get on the nerves. Tony Hasnath suggests the mystic wisdom that animates Simon but the script reduces his encounter with the “Lord of the Flies” to a babble of noise. I hope they enjoy their days in Bermuda.

Box office: 0870 0606651, until Saturday October 11. Tour continues: October 14 - October 18, Theatre Royal, Winchester (01962 840840)

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