Familia de la Noche’s Gulliver’s Travels at the Edinburgh Fringe this August was intelligent and thought provoking. Although only an hour long, the production captured the essence of Swift’s 1726 satirical adventure, moving between comedy and melancholic scenes, while also presenting a more modern exploration of Gulliver’s mindset.

In a small room above the Pleasance Courtyard, the audience surrounded the stage on three sides. With a busy set of folding-shelves and bookcases, a desk, a gramophone, the walls plastered with maps and curious trinkets, the story opens just after Lemuel Gulliver’s death. We meet his friend (played by Sean Garratt) and his daughter, Elizabeth Gulliver (played by Becca Cox), who are sorting through his belongings. The time period is brought forward to the twentieth century, following the First World War, which presents an interesting backdrop for Gulliver’s adventures, and is offered as an explanation for his having travelled around the world. At first Elizabeth explains that she was estranged from her father, and that his possessions should now all be sold. But once the pair starts sorting through, the tales of each object begin to reveal the story.

Carefully shuffling around, tied to the back of the bookcase already on set, Gulliver (played by Conrad Sharp) is brought back to life through his daughter’s imagination. Using quick-change costumes and six-inch high puppets, the audience is transported to Lilliput – a land where Gulliver is a giant. Cox and Garratt, now dressed in the same colourful outfits as their puppet-doppelgangers – currently in the hands of Gulliver – appear back on stage to voice the dialogue and mimic the action of their puppets. Garratt and Cox had a great chemistry, and drew every bit of comedy out of the scene – jumping on the giant Gulliver, tickling him and threatening to gouge his eyes out if he would not help them defeat the ships of their arch-enemies, the Blefuscudians. While Gulliver does destroy the fleet, he refuses to help the Lilliputians take over Blefuscu. After the rather slap-stick scene of Gulliver rescuing the capital of Lilliput by putting out a fire like only a giant man could, he is charged with treason. But with the help of a friend, he manages to escape on a passing ship and get himself home. The journey to Lilliput was bright and colourful, setting the tone for the performance. It was enjoyed by the adults and children alike.

We were then returned to Gulliver’s study, where Elizabeth is eager to hear more of her father’s adventures. In the voyage to Brobdingnag, a land of giants, Gulliver was played by a puppet manipulated by Sharp. Jumping across the audience’s hands and being rescued by Glumdalclitch, Gulliver finds himself living in a box at the palace of the queen, an over-the-top, and off-with-their-heads type character played brilliantly by Garratt. Narrowly escaping the clutches of the queen, Gulliver is caught by an eagle, and once again returned to the sea, only to be captured and brought home.

Much to Elizabeth’s disbelief, Gulliver’s next journey takes him to Laputa, a flying island, devoted to scientific discoveries. The voyage in Swift’s novel satirises the failed experiments of the Royal Society: extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, for example. Gulliver is then introduced to the struldbrugs, a race of immortals. He is initially overwhelmed that the scientists have found the key to eternal life, only to be corrected that they are still trying to solve the problem of ageing – this race do not die, but they do wither and decay with the years. Donning a gruesome mask, Garrett plays one of the immortals, shuffling around the stage, stumbling into and groping at the audience. Although the original satire of the scene was lost in its more comedic portrayal here, it signalled the start of an emotional change in Gulliver, which Sharp carefully brought out in his complex character.

In the final voyage, to the country of the Houyhnhnms, a race of talking horses, and the Yahoos, a primitive human form, Gulliver’s last journey becomes much darker than its predecessors. While mostly family-friendly, with the audience encouraged to clap and laugh at the wonderful comedy and colourful characters, the performance had many more melancholy moments towards the end. Although it is not always clear in the dialogue, most of the story was set in the Belle Époque and descent into the First World War. While this approach was not always consistent with the mood of the performance, it presented an interesting view of Gulliver’s experience, and the psychological effects of war. The increasing severity of Gulliver’s experiences in Swift’s narrative is re-imagined by Familia de la Noche. They have taken the issues of war and death from the story and revealed a more modern interpretation of Swift’s satirical tale. When visiting the Houyhnhnms, there is a very moving scene under a tree, where Gulliver, sitting in darkness, reflects on the primitive behaviour of the Yahoos (played by Cox and Garrett in cloaks and crude masks), comparing them to the human brutality he has seen in his own race. He attempts to explain the difference between humans and Yahoos to the intelligent, but somewhat cold Houyhnhnms, which were acted using simple skeleton-like horse faces controlled by Cox and Garrett, only to realise that most of mankind is no different to the violent Yahoos. The scene was very short, and did not take the audience as far as to question the behaviour and potential cruelty of the Houyhnhnms in their belief in reason over emotion, but it certainly shone a light on the inner turmoil of Gulliver’s character.

Unable to return to normal life after his experience, believing himself to be living amongst primitive Yahoos, the performance makes it clear Gulliver is suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress, caused by his experience in the First World War. This was made clear in the frame narrative, where flashbacks of Gulliver’s bizarre behaviour at home in his study, particularly his obsession with smell and covering himself in perfume before being called for dinner, as well as his estrangement from his family, are explained as symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

I really enjoyed Familia de la Noche’s interpretation of Gulliver’s Travels. Moving the story to the build up of the First World War was ingenious, though a little lost on the younger audience. Although the tone of the performance was not always consistent, and the change from Gulliver’s clumsy giant-self in Lilliput to his sombre distress with the Houyhnhnms was extreme in such a short performance, the character development allowed for the undertones of Swift’s original to permeate through this intelligent interpretation.

Familia de la Noche’s Gulliver’s Travels was performed at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh from 3rd August to 29th August 2016.