Four businessmen on an Outward Bound Course – What Could Go wrong?

Black RAT Productions will perform dramatist and screenwriter Tim Firth’s hilarious comedy Neville’s Island at Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan, on Wednesday November 14, 7.30pm.

The tour is a Black RAT Productions and Blackwood Miners’ Institute Co-Production in association with RCT theatres and supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

Neville’s Island tells the story of four out of condition, middle aged business men who are sent off on a team building exercise in the Lake District.

Thanks to Neville’s map reading skills they succeed in being the first people ever to get shipwrecked on an island on Derwentwater. Bound in fog, menaced by wildlife and cut off from the world, this perfunctory middle class exercise turns into a carnival of recriminations, French cricket and emergency sausages!

Relationships certainly can be changed forever by a weekend away in the country.

For the Black RAT production the play will be adapted to bring a Welsh flavour to the island adventures.

Taking on the roles of the stranded foursome are Keiron Self as Angus (TV’s My Family, High Hopes), Gareth Bale as Gordon (Black RAT’s Up ‘n; Under, High Hopes), Jams Thomas as Neville (Torchwood, The Indian Doctor) and Peter Brad-Leigh as Roy (Dinner Ladies Tour).

The mixture of their contrasting personalities plus lost survival kits, mobile phone messages and island bird watching lead to unexpected results.

Writer Tim Firth is best known for his play and film Calendar Girls and has also recently released a new film The Wedding Video.

He was originally commissioned by Alan Ayckbourn to write Neville’s Island. The play, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, was nominated for a Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Comedy and transferred to the West End and has since been seen in translation all around the world.

Writer Tim Firth said: "Neville’s Island is a comedy where an audience get to watch actors really suffer for their art.

"During the course of the story four grown men are half drowned, beaten up, covered in mud, forced to eat unmentionable things and menaced by carnivores.

"Plus they endure the worst horror of all for men together in the open – having to change out of wet things under quite small towels!

"To take this play on at all requires bravery. To take it on tour requires Herculean strength! God speed the boys of Black RAT!"

Tickets for Nevilles Island are £12 (£10), available from Mwldan’s box office on 01239 621200, www.mwldan.co.uk.