Riffing on Gulliver’s Travels

Composer Shaun Davey says his new musical dips in and out of Jonathan Swift’s most famous book, reports Richard Fitzpatrick

COMPOSER Shaun Davey has teamed up with renowned Romanian director, Silviu Purcarete, and the Radu Stanca National Theatre of Sibiu, for Gulliver’s Travels, which opens today at the Edinburgh International Festival, thanks to funding from Culture Ireland.

Purcarete and his team were feted at the festival in 2009 for their working of Faust. Davey and Purcarete were brought together by John Fairleigh, the chairman of the Ireland-Romania Cultural Foundation. Their collaboration, which premiered at the end of May at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival, is an interpretation of the works of Jonathan Swift, not a retelling of Gulliver’s Travels.