British contemporary dance sensation Matthew Bourne is best known for daring but accessible adaptations of familiar works, from Swan Lake to Edward Scissorhands. His take on Williams Golding’s 1954 dystopian novel Lord of the Flies confirms that reputation. In this Australian premiere, and the first performance outside the UK, a cast of young male dancers, both amateur and professional, delivered an energetic and mostly convincing interpretation of an unsupervised group of schoolboys’ descent into anarchy.

In this production directed by Bourne, the setting is not Golding’s tropical island but a theatre, abandoned in what appears to be the aftermath of war. This single set, designed by Lez Brotherston, is a dim, cavernous space with ascending platforms stage left. With increasing vigour as their characters shift from civility to savagery, the dancers literally bounced off these platforms, and dynamically interacted with backstage clutter such as oil drums, poles and wheeled racks of coats.

^{Sir Matthew Bourne’s Lord of the Flies. Photos © Mark Gambino}

Just as Brotherston’s costumes devolved from neat to tattered school uniforms and ultimately a tribal look heightened by face paint, Scott Ambler’s...