AS the adapter Andy Farrell points out in a programme note, Swift's book is about many things. His adaptation and Walk the Plank's staging aboard their theatre ship is concerned with just one: the power of the imagination and of fantasy.
It is a rich seam of material that serves both the setting (being ''at sea'' can have many meanings) and its intended audience of young
people. This Lemuel Gulliver (Dennis Herdman), charming and boyish in a rather too-children's-television presenter sort of a way, is pitched against be-wigged Doctor Rawlinson, whitefaced and pretentious and determined to have the man with his daft talk of Lilliputians certified insane. ''We have new procedures to weld the imagination back where it properly belongs,'' he threatens.
Using puppets for the folk of Lilliput and songs to cover the construction of makeshift sets from the furnishings of one room, this is theatrical story-telling at its simplest and best. The design team of Julian Crouch and Graeme Gilmour is the same as on the recent Shockheaded Peter at Tramway and the quality of some of the moments of invention is of the same order - a palace constructed of bric-a-brac, a macho display of rope dancing by two competing puppets (no, really).
Not consistently enough, how-ever. There was too much fumbling and uncertainty in this performance to pull in a large and sympathetic audience. Still, the message came across loud and clear, particularly since we had all just waved farewell to skipper Alasdair MacPhail and the so-called Tartan Navy, en route for the World Cup. Now there's imagination and fantasy for you.
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