Skilled Cast Finds Mild Satire in ‘Island’

Four middle-management executives are stranded on a deserted island. Sounds like the setup for a joke--and in a way it is, for it’s the setup for a comedy, “Neville’s Island,” now at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage, that offers four amusingly disparate characters, some mild social satire and one sensational sight gag.

It’s not surprising to learn that Tim Firth’s play was commissioned in 1991 by Alan Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England. Though not nearly as funny or as incisive as Ayckbourn at his best, “Neville’s Island” does share the master’s ability to examine the modern-day English middle class with both unblinking honesty and gentle affection.

The quartet of characters is involved in a team-building exercise at a Lake District retreat for the executives of a bottled water company. The teams have been dispatched to search for clues, in a kind of scavenger hunt. Neville (James Winker), the leader of this particular team, has over-analyzed the clues and brought his colleagues to a small, uninhabited lake island, which they can’t leave after their boat is wrecked.

Angus (Curtis Armstrong), a small man whose huge backpack seems to contain just about every outdoor doodad that a yuppie could possibly afford, thinks he’ll save the day by using his cell phone to call his wife--but she’s not in. After he leaves a message on her machine, his phone runs out of juice. When hours pass with no rescue in sight, this leads the ruthlessly cynical Gordon (Mark Ryan) to begin asking questions about where Angus’ wife might be.

Angus and Gordon’s clash isn’t the only personnel problem for peacemaker Neville. The fourth unwitting adventurer, Roy (Don Lee Sparks), seems placid and congenial on the surface, but he’s recovering from a recent nervous breakdown, we learn.

The first act includes a splendid sight gag, but to say more might spoil it for future theatergoers. Let’s just advise anyone who has a choice about where to sit to go for the south side of the arena-style configuration. It didn’t look as if those on the north side would have been able to see this particular joke nearly as well.

Some of the shtick doesn’t work--attempts to create anxiety over what animals might be lurking nearby are a bit lame. But the close passage of a noisy tour boat is fun, thanks in part to the lighting and sound design of Kent Dorsey and Jeff Ladman, respectively. Dorsey’s set does a lot within one small cube, fitting in a pond and a treetop perch.

Andrew J. Traister’s cast skillfully delineates several types of office personalities, and men from different locales and backgrounds--in fact, the accents and slang are occasionally hard for Yankee ears to decipher.

* “Neville’s Island,” Old Globe Theatre, Cassius Carter Centre Stage, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 28. $33-$39. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.