Gulliver’s Travels

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS is one of the most significant and widely read classics of English literature, and has been since its publication in 1726.

George Orwell called it “one of the ten best books ever written”, and on its original publication it was hailed as being “read from the nursery to the Houses of Parliament”. TNT’s acclaimed version has the same appeal, at once an entertaining adventure story and a profound analysis of the human condition.

The production will be revived in 2026–2027 and Gulliver will travel from Estonia to Spain. Join us on the greatest fictional voyage, a voyage not only to wild lands peopled with mad scientists and talking horses but into our own selves.

The production has toured from China to Malta and Germany to Malaysia. It has been performed in simple school halls and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. One of Europe’s leading newspapers described this TNT production in detail:

This utopian satirical novel by Jonathan Swift is one of the most read books of world literature. The story was ascribed to a fictional author, namely Lemuel Gulliver, who has experienced amazing adventures as a ship’s doctor and later as a captain. He not only travelled into the land of Lilliput and to the island of giants Brobdingnag, but also to the flying island Laputa, whose inhabitants are so intensely involved in mathematics, music and astronomy that they are almost unable to develop personal relationships.

His fourth journey brings Gulliver to a country which is ruled by coldly intelligent horses and inhabited by brutal human beasts, the Yahoos. The piece is performed in an almost musical style, with live music and songs. Paul Stebbings brilliantly transforms his actors from dwarfs to giants. First Gulliver on stilts seems excessively large against all the others crawling on their knees. Like Prometheus, the giant Gulliver is captured by the petty, self-important little people of Lilliput. The satire on the rulers of the kingdom of Lilliput was hilarious and at the same time sharp and well observed. On the other hand, the giants of the kingdom of Brobdingnag on their stilts appear alarmingly dangerous.

But the highlight of the performance is the last scene where the horses—either two actors in a horse costume or one actor with a horse head—place Gulliver under more and more pressure, joined by the Yahoos. This is where Swift’s satire on human folly most impressively comes into its own.