Treasure Island cover art

Treasure Island

An Audible Original Drama

 Preview

Treasure Island

By: Robert Louis Stevenson, Marty Ross - adaptation
Narrated by: Philip Glenister, Daniel Mays, Catherine Tate, Owen Teale
Listen for free

Season's Savings | £0.99/mo for 3 months

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly

Audible Originals takes to the high seas to bring to life this timeless tale of pirates, lost treasure maps and mutiny, starring Catherine Tate (BAFTA-nominated, The Catherine Tate Show, The Office, Doctor Who), Philip Glenister (Outcast, Life On Mars), Owen Teale (Game of Thrones, Pulse, Last Legion) and Daniel Mays (The Adventures of Tintin, Rogue One, Atonement) amongst others.

Featuring: Stephen Critchlow, James Doherty, Philip Glenister, Peter Gold, Ed Harrison, David Holt, Gerran Howell, Matthew Jure, Daniel Mays, Gerard McDermott, Paul McEwan, Harry Myers, Greg Page, Richard Reed, Mark Straker, Catherine Tate, Owen Teale and Ben Whitehead.

Now available in Dolby Atmos on Audible.

Public Domain (P)2017 Audible, Ltd Classics Fiction Funny Feel-Good Scary Adaptation Adventure Fantasy Pirate Mystery Self Help Fiction Drama
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
Thoroughly enjoyed this version of Treasure Island. Faithful to the book but with enough dramatic licence to keep it original and entertaining and helped even further by a wonderful cast. Superb.

Excellent adaption.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
loved it. exciting and a good tale to get into. cant beat it a bit of shwashbuckling

really good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Apart from some irritating repeating dialogue where the characters echo each other this is an excellent production. As a child, I missed the clever references to the real pirates which still persist today in the form of 'the establishment'. An excellent production of a very enjoyable story.

Great fun with hidden depth

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
When I re-read Treasure Island a few years ago, I fell in love with it all over again. It's undoubtedly one of the best adventure stories ever written, full of characters who've become such a part of our national psyche they almost feel historical rather than fictional – Long John Silver, Blind Pew, Ben Gunn, Jim Hawkins (arr, Jim, lad!), et al. Even younger people who may not have read the book will recognise these characters even if they don't recognise the names, since they've been used and adapted in nearly every pirate book or movie ever since – the wooden-legged pirate with a parrot on his shoulder (Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Squa-a-a-wk!), the young boy caught up in piratical adventures on the high seas, the sailor marooned – maroooned, I tell 'ee! – on a desert island, the villainous baddie bringing messages of doom, the treasure map where X marks the spot...

So needless to say, when I was offered the chance to listen to Audible's new dramatisation, I grabbed it with both hands, dug out a bottle of rum, and set sail for lands unknown, me hearties! And that was even before I read the cast list and realised they'd gone all out to get some of the absolute best. Gotta say, every single member of the cast, stars and supporting, throw themselves into this with glee – you can literally hear how much fun they're having bringing these fabulously over-the-top characters to life.

My memory for plot details is totally rubbish, but as far as I could tell the adaptation sticks very faithfully to the original. There's a little more humour in it than I remembered so perhaps a few scenes have been altered for that purpose. At first, when the action is in the Admiral Benbow Inn where young Jim-lad lives with his mother (played excellently by Catherine Tate), I thought they had maybe lightened it up a bit to make it suitable for younger children. But indeed not! Some parts of it are very dark indeed, and the cast don't skimp on bringing out the scary bits. And somehow hearing it rather than reading it made those parts even more effective – genuinely thrilling! Black Dog in particular scared the bejabers out of me, and I think I fall safely into the category of older child.

Although it's a dramatisation, it's not abridged. It has a running time of 6 hours and 26 minutes which is almost identical to the timing on straight narrations. Jim Hawkins (Gerran Howell) acts his role in the action sequences, but also provides a narration for the linking bits. Rather unfairly, he doesn't get listed as one of the stars, but he gives an excellent performance too. Oliver Teale is utterly brilliant as Long John Silver, and Daniel Mays' Ben Gunn is so much fun – marooned! Maroooooned, I tell'ee!! Philip Glenister is perfect as Doctor Livesey. The only thing that annoyed me is that Audible never provides a written cast list for these productions, and the cast list on the recording is always at the end, so I find I'm constantly trying to work out who's playing whom, especially when they're all having so much fun with accents. In this case, even when they did list the cast, they didn't specify which role each actor had played. I think several of them play more than one role, but there are also loads of other actors playing some of the smaller roles. I'm almost certain it's Daniel Mays giving a tour-de-force performance as Capt'n Flint the parrot, who starts out as part of the humour and gets progressively scarier as the thing goes on.

There's some appropriately sea-shanty style incidental music and the sound effects are great – waves crashing, ships creaking, cutlasses clashing, big guns booming (jumped a foot in the air when that happened – and I was sitting down at the time. My cat was not pleased!). And I warn you now, not only will you find yourself joining in whenever they burst into a full-cast rendition of Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest, but you'll still be singing it two weeks later – or maybe that's just me...

Can you tell I loved this? I enjoyed every single minute of it and instead of parcelling it out into half-hour instalments as I usually do with audiobooks, I ended up listening to the bulk of it in two massive chunks over one weekend. It will be one I listen to often again – perfect for dark winter nights or long car journeys or just whenever I'm accosted by the need to hear Ben Gunn tell me again that he's marooned – marooooooooned, I tell 'ee! Dark and scary with shafts of humour, tons of action, thrilling adventures, great script, fabulous acting – Yo! Ho! HO!

NB This audiobook was provided for review by Audible UK via MidasPR.

Yo! Ho! Ho!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Listened in the car and had me hoping the traffic jams would last longer. Brilliant adaptation.

Gripping and thoroughly entertaining.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews