There’s much to admire in this spirited and darkly inventive new version of the adventure classic, directed by Sean Holmes. The adaptation, by Ken Ludwig, sticks closely to the original, so you get plenty of Stevenson’s rich and salty dialogue: “You lopeared rabbits!”; “I’ll see the colour of your insides!” The action sequences are terrific, too, particularly the dangling from ropes. Sacha, 11, thought the moment when one of the pirates is beheaded, and his severed head bounces bloodily across the stage, was “sick”, but meant this as the highest compliment. And, although there were some “boring bits”, the verdict on Keith Allen’s warm-hearted and thuggishly charismatic Long John Silver was: “You like him, though you know you shouldn’t really.” I suspect a lot of us feel like that about Keith Allen.

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