James Haddrell speaks on the latest stage adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels
In 1726, an Irish writer and clergyman published a satirical novel written in the style of the “travellers’ tales” that were popular in the day.
The book was an instant success, read (according to his contemporary John Gay, writer of The Beggar’s Opera), “from the cabinet council to the nursery.”
There can be few books written that long ago that have remained at the forefront of public imagination, but this one – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – has been adapted countless times for television, cinema, stage and print.
One of the reasons for the enduring appeal of the novel is surely the multiple levels that this kind of storytelling uses.
If you think about the tales that survive history and remain popular, the approach can be found again and again in those stories ostensibly written for children that have survived and remained popular.
Kipling’s Jungle Book (published 128 years ago) is a story about a boy raised by wolves and the animals he befriends, but it is also about colonialism, loyalty, power and the nature of the individual within society.
Pinocchio (139 years ago) is about a puppet child who comes to life and has a series of adventures but it is also about truth, about living in a society recovering from conflict, about poverty and about how a life should be used.
As you would expect from the writer behind A Modest Proposal, a satirical pamphlet advocating eating babies as a solution to Irish poverty, there is just as much reflection on the way we could and should live our lives in Gulliver’s Travels.
It is certainly a tale about a man who visits a land of miniature people, a land of giants, a land of scientists and finally a land ruled by horses, but it is also a book about what makes us a civilised species, about military conflict, government and diplomacy, science and art.
The very best tales of this nature, that appeal to different audiences on different levels, manage to relay some of their more complex ideas to a young audience as well as taking them on a simple adventure – learning about the importance of the truth from Pinocchio, about the impact of humans on the natural world and the role of family and society from The Jungle Book.
The latest stage adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels to come to London, playing at the Unicorn Theatre from Sunday, March 6, is in good hands and promises to do just that.
Lula Raczka, the writer behind this new modern version, is a winner of the Sunday Times Young Playwriting Award and company director of Barrel Organ Theatre, while director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart was a finalist for the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award 2018 and finalist for the JMK Award in 2016.
She was recently on attachment at The National Theatre Studio, and is co-artistic director of Antler, an associate company at Bush Theatre.
Of course, a story that takes the hero first to a land of people no more than six inches high, and then moments later to a land of giants, needs some theatrical magic, so this production promises a combination of live video camera, intricate table-top sets and projection alongside live performance – and guarantees to keep the satirical heart of Swift’s original alive and well, three centuries after it was first published.