Photos courtesy of the Beef & Boards Theatre. Top: Pirates on the Hispaniola; center: Rick Desloge as Jim Hawkins; bottom, Jamie Jackson as Long John Silver.
In 1998, Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark unveiled a thrilling new musical adaptation of Treasure Island at the Drury Lane in the south suburban Evergreen Park. Time and tide have rolled mercilessly on since then – a Walmart stands where the theater was. Robin and Clark left Chicago years ago to settle in Pennsylvania. But between Robin’s non-stop directing gigs and Clark’s equally peripatetic work as an actor, they made time for Treasure Island, writing re-writing, tweaking and fine-tuning. What began as an hour-long musical for young children morphed into a full-blown two-hour show capable of captivating a wide range of ages.
The final result is on stage through May 17 at Indianapolis’ Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre. Somewhere, Robert Louis Stevenson is hoisting an otherworldly tank of grog and toasting the production. Like its source novel, Treasure Island the musical (book, lyrics by Robin Clark, music by Robin) has adventure and excitement enough to appeal to children and is complex and smart enough to keep adults interested from overture to curtain call. Directed by Robin, it’s that rarest of birds: A bonafide family show that won’t bore adults silly or set children to squirming. 
Like Stevenson’s novel, the musical is packed with rollicking escapades on the ocean, multi-layered characters and enough complex moral ambiguity to make the audience ponder the many shades of unnerving gray between good and evil. Those gradations are part of the appeal of Treasure Island. In lesser hands, the story would have been dumbed down to one-note villains and heroes. But Stephenson didn’t do that in his novel and Clark and Robin certainly don’t do that in their musical. Moreover, the all male cast of 17 (backed by a live 5-piece orchestra) sounds terrific. Full-company, all-hands-on-deck numbers such as “Mutiny” and “Cast Off” offer robust, testosterone-fueled examples of four-part male harmony at its finest.
As in the novel, the story focuses on young Jim Hawkins (Rick Desloge). The death of a father, a creepy, foreshadow-full encounter in a sketchy pub and the discovery of a tattered treasure map set the stage for Hawkins to set sail in search of long-lost riches. Chief among the colorful characters in the ship’s crew: Long John Silver (Jamie Jackson), a one-legged wire of a man with dangerous and secret intentions.
As the ship sails forth, Hawkins is caught in a tug-of-war between father figures: On the one side, Long John, mysterious, hard-drinking and quick to resort to trigger finger diplomacy if things aren’t going his way. On the other, Dr. Livesey (Curt Dale Clark), a proper pillar of society, buttoned-up, responsible as a Scout Master and never forgetting his manners even in the face of mutinying pirates. From merry Olde England to high seas to Skeleton Island, this human triad forms the bones of the story.
Robin elicits fine performances from all three men. Jackson’s Long John is marvelously detailed, a good man who does terrible things (and notably, never once stoops to the arrrgh, matey stereotype of cartoon pirates.) Clark is also on the mark, a perpetually exasperated worrier who falls just shy of anal retentiveness in his determination to keep Master Hawkins’ safety and morality intact. But it’s Deloge’s Hawkins who carries the bulk of the show on his fit shoulders. He manages this with grace and soaring vocals from the frustrated, boyish plea of “Look at Me” to the anthemic “Seize the Day.”
As production numbers go, Clark and Robin wrote several showstoppers, including “To the Gold,” a chantey that features torch-carrying pirates scrambling over Treasure Island and encountering all manner of skeletons, ghosts and spookiness. Kudos to lighting designer Paul Black for creating an atmospheric twilight of flames and shadows.
With able supporting work from J.R. Stuart as a fusspot overdressed squire and Eddie Curry as a deceptively crazed castaway, Treasure Island’s ensemble of scurvy knaves displays a talent pool as rich as a chest of gold.
Here’s hoping Treasure Island sails into Chicago in the near future.
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