Adventure focuses on survival of couple

Press, 22 July 1988, Page 24

Adventure focuses on survival of couple

Nicholas Roeg’s “Castaway,” which will start today at the Avon, is an unusual and extraordinary production. Certainly, it is an adventure story, but it is also a romantic tragi-com-edy with unmistakable elements of a fairy-tale. More than anything, however, it is a stoiy of the survival — emotional rather than physical— of two people who, but for a magazine advertisement, would never have met.

A publisher, Gerald Kingsland (Oliver Reed)

is looking for a companion to join him for one year on a deserted tropical island. Lucy Irvine (Amanda Donohue), bored to distraction by her life in London, applies and is selected as his “Girl Friday.” Thus begins an adventure of epic proportions.

Unlike Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, who had a whole ship’s store at his disposal, Lucy and Gerald — by design — have few supplies. The supplies are soon to run out and it is

not long before they are fighting for their lives.

Yet, it is not man’s primordial instinct to survive against all odds that forms the character of “Castaway.” Rather, it is the relationship — passive, aggressive, funny, sad, romantic, sexual, always engrossing — of two people: Gerald, the lusty, enigmatic maverick with a somewhat roguish character; and Lucy, the beautiful young woman who falls in love with a dream rather than a man.