Central to William Golding's dystopian novel "Lord of the Flies" is the notion of violence as a social construct. "Maybe there is a beast ... maybe it's only us," says the protective Simon before a hostile assembly of other schoolboys marooned on the uninhabited island where the English Nobel laureate set their blood-soaked descent into savagery.

Since it was published in 1954, the deeply disturbing tale has been the subject of several notable film and stage adaptations, including Peter Brook's stark black-and-white screen rendition in 1963 and Nigel Williams' acclaimed version for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1996. This month, "Landslide World" by the Tokyo-based Shika Goroshi theater company, is the latest work to join that august canon.

Founded in 2000 by director Chobi Natsuki and playwright Maruichiro Maruo during their undergraduate days at Kansai Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, Shika Goroshi — which translates as "deer killing" — first made its mark in the Kansai region staging works by the Korean-Japanese playwright Kohei Tsuka and through street performances heavy on visual kei (literally "visual style") — a made-in-Japan fashion and music style involving lots of makeup, fancy hairstyles and showy costumes.