“If you pull it out by the root, it won’t grow back.”

The fate of the humble seaweed if plucked from the ground by an overzealous hand.

The fate of Molly (Faoileann Cuningham), who after being forced to leave her homeland of Achill Island in County Mayo through the twin drivers of work and want, hardens her warm Irish lilt into a “stone-cold silence” which festers from mother to daughter to granddaughter to son.

The latter of whom being the Glaswegian teenager Michael (Ryan Hunter) whose school project into a Kirkintilloch bothy fire of 1934, in which ten migrant workers lost their lives in suspicious circumstances, upturns smooth pebbles long-buried in the mud to reveal a rough underside of secrets and lies, anger and guilt.

“Best to leave history in the history books, son,” says his grandmother Grace (Anne Kidd) before urging him to “get on with living.” But her carpe diem advice masks a field of sorrow which when tilled by his time travelling discoveries threatens to tear their family apart.

The plot and themes of Scottie, co-written by Theatre Gu Leòr’s artistic director Muireann Kelly (who also directs) and Frances Poet whose first full-length play Gut was this week nominated for Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards, does not so much resonate with events of today, it mirrors them.

Men, women and children mired in poverty who risk life and limb crossing treacherous waters to earn a literal crust. Their temporary shelters nothing more than cattle sheds. Their foreign accents stirring fear and hate.

“Kirkintiloch looks a pretty green place,” says Stephen McCole’s Gaffer to his red-bloodied group of tattie howkers, “but it is Orange to the core.” In other words, stay away from the fillies, keep your head down and work.

A strategy which pays dividends until fear of the outsider leads to a tragic fire which prompts the Irish government to send the following chilling telegram: “Beir abhaile ar marbh / Send home our dead”.

Given the sombre subject matter and ethereal nature of the time travelling choreography by Jessica Kennedy, the pace and mood is for the most part elegiac. Perhaps too much so. And the interweaving of Scots and English, Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, though never confusing at times verges on Skippy the Bush Kanagroo-like translating as Michael repeats back what he has heard.

But these are minor dud spuds in a rich harvest by the eight-strong cast which includes Colin Campbell as the Gaffer’s Son, Cian McNamarra as Molly’s brother Fraoch and Mairi Morrison as Michael’s mother Morag who under a haunting lighting design by Simon Wilkinson emerge from Charlotte Lane’s translucent set like wandering souls lost in limbo.

Souls whose fates were sealed because, as Molly said in the aftermath of the bothy fire, “nobody cared about them enough to ask the right questions.” (Grenfell Tower springs to mind.) Souls which rest in peace when Michael’s mother and grandmother make peace with their past.

Peter Callaghan
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