Your Flies Redone

Adapting a wildly popular, widely familiar work of literature for the stage can be a dicey affair. That's not to say that it hasn't been attempted. There was, of course, the ill-fated To Kill a Mockingbird roller disco rock opera, The Diary of Anne Frank as a nude revue and Mummenschanz's pantomimed presentation of Atlas Shrugged. There was also the avant-garde interpretive dance version of The Old Man and the Sea and John Leguizamo's award-winning off-Broadway one-man show of Little Women. And who could forget the theatrical atrocity that was the all-Asian production of The Color Purple? Nigel Williams' adaptation of Lord of the Flies seems destined to fare better. Now set in Hurricane Katrina's immediate aftermath, William Golding's classic novel is refitted to tell the story of a group of schoolboys left to their own wits, wills and devices in a city devastated by natural disaster and bureaucratic breakdown. Public Works Theatre Company and Risk Theater Initiative's joint presentation of Lord of the Flies runs through January 26 at the Bath House Cultural Center, 512 E. Lawther Drive. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students, seniors and groups. Call 214-774-7242 or visit publicworksdallas.org.
Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Starts: Jan. 4. Continues through Jan. 26, 2008