Lord of the Flies to make its debut as a major musical at the Oxford Playhouse in July

The Lord of the Flies, the first novel by Nobel prize-winning author Sir William Golding, who grew up in Marlborough, is to become a major musical due to be given its premiere at the Oxford Playhouse in July.

It is a significant and exciting event for admirers of Golding, a pupil at Marlborough Grammar School, where his father was a teacher, since it has immaculate talent behind the Playhouse initiative.

The musical, which calls in students from Magdalen College School in Oxford to play the roles of the boys stranded on an island, is being directed by Adrian Noble, former chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the winner of numerous theatrical awards, receiving some 20 nominations for Olivier awards during his career.

He has also worked for the noted Peter Hall Company, The Manhatten Theatre Club, Kent Opera and directed a productions of Giovanni in a Paris circus tent.

And the music for the production, co-directed by Joanne Pearce, is by the award-winning Irish composer Shaun Davey, who has composed for the concert hall, the stage and TV, his work performed round the world.

His compositions have included the theatre scores for The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe, and the TV and film scores for Ballykissangle, The Tailor of Panama, David Copperfield and Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night.

He received the People of the Year award for his contribution to Irish culture, an Ivor Novello Award for his score for The Hanging Gale, and this year was nominated for a Tony award for his music for the hit Broadway version of James Joyce’s The Dead.

The Oxford Playhouse production of Lord of the Flies – the novel about a group of British boys stuck on an uninhabited island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results was a flop when it was published in 1954 – will run from July 5 to 7.

The novel subsequently twice adapted as a film, in 1963 and 1990, and became an international best seller, chosen by The Times newspaper as third in the list of the greatest British authors since 1945.

And Golding, who lived on The Green, in Marlborough, in his early days – there is a commemorative plaque on his home there – went on to win the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980, was made a Nobel laureate for literature in 1983 and knighted in 1988.

He died in 1993, aged 81.

The Lord of the Flies musical Oxford Playhouse tryout could become a significant West End and international production if it proves a major success.