The next production at the Apollo Theatre, Newport, will be what the playwright has described as ‘a comedy in thick fog’. Sometimes described as ‘The Office meets Lord of the Flies meets Miranda’, ‘Sheila’s Island’, by Tim Firth, was written as a companion piece to his 1994 play ‘Neville’s Island’.

It is Bonfire Night 2019 and four out-of-condition, middle-aged businesswomen succeed in becoming the first people ever to get shipwrecked on an island in the Lake District on their annual outward-bound team-building weekend. Bound in fog, menaced by wildlife and cut off from the world, this perfunctory middle-class exercise turns into a carnival of recriminations, French cricket and sausages.

What should have been a bonding process for Denise, Julie, Fay and Sheila turns into a muddy, bloody fight for survival. Because when night settles in, strange things happen out in the wilds. And what takes place on Sheila’s Island that foggy November weekend none of this particular middle-management team will ever forget.

The original play, ‘Neville’s Island’, which had a similar plot but an all-male cast, was staged at the Apollo. Firth wrote this all-female version some thirty years later, in recognition that the
corporate world had changed in some ways but not in others.

‘Sheila’s Island’ can be seen on stage at the Apollo Theatre from 25 October-2 November (not Sunday or Monday). Book online at www.apollo-theatre.org.uk or ring the box office on (01983) 210010.