4 stars
Gary McNair is probably best known for his ever-expanding canon of self performed solo stage works. These have largely been personal passion projects, from homages to Morrissey and Billy Connolly, to McNair’s granddad in the recently revived A Gambler’s Guide to Dying. McNair has also applied his masterly storytelling to new stage versions of classics including Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist and a version of Charles Dickens’ rites of passage novel, Great Expectations, reimagined as Nae Expectations.
Rites of passage are here too in McNair’s urgent version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ultimate boy’s own adventure yarn, stripped down to an hour without losing any of the original’s narrative largesse. McNair sounds both chatty and conspiratorial as cabin boy Jim Hawkins, on the run from his dead dad’s pub and on a mission that sees McNair embody the voices of Billy Bones, Long John Silver and all the rest with an intense sense of unfinished business. Pulsed by Michael John McCarthy’s cracked fiddle-led score, with McCarthy accompanied by Malin Lewis, this makes for a gripping and intimate experience.
McNair, McCarthy, Lewis and director Kirsty Williams did something similar a couple of years back with their Radio 4 version of Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter. McNair has previously plundered Stevenson on stage by way of his one-man Jekyll & Hyde, performed in Edinburgh by Forbes Masson.
For a Treasure Island primer, it’s also worth checking out TV producer John Yorke’s 15-minute dissection of Stevenson’s novel in an edition of Radio 4’s bite-size lit crit show, Opening Lines. This sees the likes of Michael Morpurgo and Louise Welsh waxing lyrical on the enduring power of the book. In McNair’s hands, Jim’s quest never stops in a coming of age tale where lost father figures loom large in a bravura turn that brings Stevenson’s story to captivating new life.
Treasure Island is available on BBC Sounds
The List, September 2025
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