Orange Tree, Richmond
Playwright Hannah Khalil weaves the real stories of buccaneering women into Stevenson’s classic adventure story, in a show filled with youthful verve

When two women offer their services to a crew setting off for adventures at sea, young Jim Hawkins expresses his surprise. They have always been there, the women tell Jim, but just haven’t been well documented. Playwright Hannah Khalil is rectifying this in her retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic by combining his tale of buccaneers and buried gold with that of 19th-century female sailors – but without making it a jarring history lesson.

It is structured as a relived memory for Jim, who is looking to the moment an old shipmate of Captain Flint enters his mother’s inn and dies. That death sets off the discovery of Flint’s map containing the location of hidden treasure, and the expedition to find it by a ragtag fleet of sailors. Among them is Long John Silver, the pirate disguised as a cook, and the two female sailors who scheme to mutiny and take control of the treasure.