Theatr Clwyd, Mold
William Golding’s fable of desert-island anarchy is reinvented for the modern age in Emma Jordan’s brutal, bold production
There’s a theory being pushed by the psychologist Michele Gelfand, of the University of Maryland. In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, she suggests there are two types of society: the “tight” cultures, in which rules are strictly enforced, and the “loose” communities, in which things are more free and easy. She says Japan, where the trains run on time, is tight, and Brazil, where everyone arrives late, is loose.
Looked at through this lens, Lord of the Flies is about a very particular threat. At risk for William Golding were the tight values of mid 20th-century Britain, a doctrine of discipline, civility and order that had seen the country through two world wars. The novelist, who took part in the D-day landings and knew all about man’s inhumanity to man, is concerned about the tribalism and savagery of his desert-island evacuees as they build a new social order after surviving a plane crash. But he is equally troubled by their departure from the norms of what he sees as civilised society. It’s not exactly that the abandonment of school uniform and disregard for the rule of the conch is as terrifying as the violence that follows, but he certainly sees them as two sides of the same coin.
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