Ten strangers meet on a mysterious island. They have barely introduced themselves when a voice comes out of the gramophone, accusing them each of committing murder at some point in the past. Then one by one, they start to die... Who is the mysterious orchestrator of this? The answers to their questions are hidden in a children's poem sitting on the table; a poem about ten little soldiers who run away, one by one, until there are none left. 

This is the third time I've directed this show, and this time around I decided to take a more inventive approach, specifically to the setting and the staging of the show. The show is set on a fictional island called Soldier Island, off the coast of England somewhere. I wanted to see if it was possible to suggest a more exotic and international location. In my search for mysterious island that might provide inspiration, I discovered the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. It is small, out of the way, and decidedly multinational: residents are mostly Irish, Creole, and African. Passersby include South Americans, anyone from a nation formerly connected to the British Empire, and anyone on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. So basically anyone could drop by. That's the kind of setting I was looking for, and that inspired our setting of the play. You'll notice this particularly in the way the characters speak: nations represented include England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Nigeria, South Africa, Chile, the United States, and China. Soldier Island in our show is still a small fictional island off the coast, but off the coast of something more like Montserrat than England. 

I am also for the first time staging the show with an arena layout; that is, the audience sits on all four sides of the stage. The idea is that the audience feels very close to the action, and can experience more closely the tension building in that room as the victims wonder who will be the next to go! 

Welcome to our Montserrat, and we hope you enjoy the show!