Duncan McLean on creating a new version of Treasure Island set in Leith and Orkney

He also knows that when the writer Robert Louis Stevenson was a young man, he travelled with his lighthouse engineer father, north from their home in Edinburgh, to visit the Stevenson lighthouses in Orkney and Shetland; and that his first island journey was therefore not to the Caribbean, famous for its pirates, nor to the South Pacific where he made his final home, but to Orkney, where McLean has lived for the last 30 years.

McLean first found fame as a writer back in 1980s Edinburgh, when he wrote scripts for the hugely popular Merry Mac Fun Co, and - as part of a generation of Edinburgh writers that also included Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner - went on to produce his acclaimed early novels Blackden and Bunker Man, as well as co-founding the Clocktower Press, which published the first version of Welsh’s Trainspotting.

In the 1990s, though, McLean moved north to Orkney, continuing to write, but also playing with his own western swing band Lone Star Swing, becoming an award-winning wine merchant in Kirkwall, and immersing himself in the life and stories of Orkney. So when Lyceum artistic director David Greig first approached McLean to write for the theatre, it’s hardly surprising that Stevenson came to mind, as a writer with strong Edinburgh and Orkney connections; and all the more so when McLean realised that Stevenson’s great adventure story Treasure Island was published in 1883, the same year that the Lyceum first opened its doors.

“At first,” says McLean, “I was obsessing about the extraordinary architecture of the Lyceum as a beautiful Victorian theatre, and thinking of some moody, ambiguous post-colonial exploration of Treasure Island, not really aimed at children or a family audience at all.

“But when David suggested making it a Christmas show, the director Wils Wilson and I just made this pivot back to the essence of Stevenson’s story, which is a terrific adventure story about a young hero, Jim Hawkins - a boy barely into his teens - who finds himself swept up in this amazing quest for lost and hidden treasure.

“It’s said that Stevenson first told the story to amuse his young stepson, who was recovering from an illness. And I think that, at the deepest level, this is the story of a young boy going out into the world and encountering a series of vivid characters each of whom uses language, and the story they tell, to manipulate people, and to try to achieve what they want. Young Jim has to learn how to navigate all these different narratives, and to put together his own version of the truth. And if you think about it, that’s a powerful story for our own time.”

McLean’s stage version takes many liberties with the original story, of course. “We just threw the story at the wall,” says McLean of his early script sessions with Wilson, “so that it splattered into pieces; and then took all the vital characters and elements, and put them back together again.”

Most significantly, the journey in McLean’s version is not from the south coast of England to the Caribbean, but from Leith to Orkney; we first discover young Jim working in a retired pirates’ refuge in Granton, and he sails off to find the treasure not with the local squire, but with the Laird o’ Leith. And Wilson’s production will also be no respecter of traditional gender roles, with a terrifying Lean Jean Silver played by the fabulous Amy Conachan - a leader among UK actors with disability - while Jim is played by young Edinburgh actor Jade Chan.

“Well, it’s a Christmas tradition, isn’t it?” says Duncan McLean. “The Principal Boy is a girl, men can play women, and everything is allowed. The only cast member I knew before we started rehearsal was our composer and onstage musician Tim Dalling, whom I knew and loved for his work with the Old Rope String Band.

“But these actors are absolutely tremendous. They don’t just speak your words - they sing, they dance, they play a couple of musical instruments each, they climb ropes like athletes. The whole thing looks wonderful, in Alex Berry’s design; so simple, and yet absolutely magical. And no, I wouldn’t say the show is particularly aimed at any age group. It really is a show for all the family, built around a great story that everyone can enjoy.”

Wilson agrees. “It’s been great fun in rehearsal creating an epic story through the actors’ amazing skills, and by transforming simple objects - ladders, ropes, wood - into a dangerous sea voyage or a craggy island. The theatre looks beautiful, with twinkling lights and a wooden floor, and we really hope the style of storytelling will invite everyone in.”

As for McLean’s fascination with the architecture of the Lyceum, and its powerful 19th century glamour - well, there is one detail that gives him particular pleasure, as Treasure Island moves onto the stage. “You know that the Lyceum still has a traditional rope system for flying scenery in and out, and so on. But most people don’t know that when the theatre was first built, all of that rigging was first put in place by men who had been sailors, with all their vast experience of ropes and knots.

“So it’s no wonder that it still feels like a ship, backstage at the Lyceum, when all the ropes are working; and no wonder that this show looks so much at home there, as Jim and his shipmates get ready to sail.”

Treasure Island is at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from 28 November until 4 January