The cast of Lord of the Flies (photograph by Zan Wimberley)

In his program notes, director Kip Williams tells us that he sees the story as being not about humanity as a whole but about ‘white, able-bodied, and ostensibly cis gender and straight identifying boys … I see it as being specifically about toxic masculine cultures.’ This might have surprised Golding, who deliberately made his boys prepubescent to avoid the issue of sex and who talked about the ‘terrible disease of being human’. Ironically, by casting such a disparate group, Williams has achieved the exact opposite of his intention. As the cast, in all their splendid diversity, lined up for their curtain call, we were left to consider the possibility that we could all be capable of such savagery. Peter Brook’s film version shows how the link between the rigid and brutally enforced discipline of a mid-twentieth-century British public school could morph into the equally brutal power structure of Jack’s bloodthirsty gang. Williams’s cast, on the other hand, coming from no discernible background, stress the story’s universality.

Williams begins the play with an empty stage. As the performance progresses, Elizabeth Gadsby’s design, Alexander Berlage’s lighting, and James Brown’s music become more prominent. But two vital effects are underplayed. The group of hunters post the head of a pig on a stake as a gift to the ‘beast’ that is rumoured to lurk in the jungle. To the epileptic and mystic Simon, this head becomes the lord of the flies, a biblical sobriquet for Beelzebub, which mockingly tells him that the boys can never escape the beast since it lurks within them. As Simon, Joseph Althouse brings off this scene as well as he can, but clutching a papier- mâché head and rocking backwards and forwards doesn’t really achieve the necessary sense of horror the scene demands. This is one moment when the currently much overused video might have been useful. Another is the nightmare ‘creature’ the boys mistake for the beast. This is the body of a dead airman that has landed on the island and which, still attached to its parachute, moves in the wind. For those unfamiliar with the story, the parachute hanging from the flies might have been puzzling, and the horror of the dead body is missing.

Mia Wasikowska as Ralph in Lord of the Flies (photograph by Zan Wimberley)

The heart of the story is the contest between the two natural leaders in the group: Ralph, the sober, sensible boy who tries to keep order democratically but who has no understanding as to why this becomes impossible; and Jack, head boy of his school and leader of its choir, whose idea of leadership involves imposing his mastery by force, the triumph of the will in fact. As Ralph, Mia Wasikowska brings out his basic decency and strength but never lets us forget that he is a little boy, and makes his perplexity moving as things spiral out of his control. As Jack, Contessa Treffone comes up against both the adaptation and the way she has been required to play him. In the book, Jack is at first very much a creature of his upbringing: a disciplinarian with his choir, but also someone whose sense of honour compels him to apologise to Ralph. There are even fleeting moments when the two leaders share, if not affection, then at least companionship. But for Williams, Jack is obviously the ultimate symbol of masculine toxicity, so Treffone is required to play him as an evil thug from the start. With nowhere to develop, the character remains one-dimensional.

The two boys who, in their very different ways, are the only ones to have any understanding of evil, and who are therefore singled out for sacrifice, are Simon and Piggy. Joseph Althouse, as we have seen, does his best with Simon, but Nigel Williams’s adaptation doesn’t allow him to present the character in depth, as written in the novel. As Piggy, Rahel Romahn is luckier. Piggy, the plump, practical, short-sighted asthmatic has, in his prosaic way, the clearest understanding of what is happening, and if he doesn’t understand evil in the way that Simon does, he certainly knows it when he sees it. Romahn gets his character’s dogmatic decency, and his murder is truly shocking in its matter-of-factness.

Rahel Romahn as Piggy in Lord of the Flies (photograph by Zan Wimberley)

As Roger, Piggy’s murderer, Daniel Monks is all underplayed malevolence, which contrasts nicely with Treffone’s overt malice. The rest of the cast fill their roles with energy and enthusiasm.

If some of the adaptation undercuts the original novel, in one essential place it improves it. In the novel, at the very end, Golding bottles it and allows the boys to be rescued. This production ends in a much more ambivalent and mysterious way. Humanity is not to be let off so easily.

Lord of the Flies, presented by the Sydney Theatre Company, continues at the Roselyn Packer Theatre until 24 August 2019. Performance attended: July 27.