Theatre review: Thora, Orkney Theatre, Kirkwall Grammar School

Little is known of Thora, the mother of St Magnus, yet David McNeish’s sometimes harrowing play about her life feels all too credible, writes Joyce McMillan

Thora, Orkney Theatre, Kirkwall, Grammar School ****

In the beautiful Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, I find myself gazing for a long time at a beautiful Barbara Hepworth sculpture called Two Heads (Mother And Child). Despite her struggles to balance the demands of motherhood and art, Hepworth fully understood the intensity of the mother-child bond; so the sculpture – one of several small Hepworth pieces in the exquisite Margaret Gardiner collection at the Pier – seems to demand attention, on the day before I head to Kirkwall to see David McNeish’s play Thora, about the life of the high-born Norwegian woman who, in 1080, became the mother of Orkney’s patron saint, Magnus.

People who visit Orkney often hope to find peace. They are often surprised, though, to find not only peace, but something that goes beyond that – a commitment to peace, perhaps, or a place with a special relationship to the idea of peace; and that feeling has much to do with the legend of Magnus, Earl of Orkney, a man of peace who met his death, around 1117-18, after his warlike cousin Haakon reneged on a peace deal, and had him slaughtered on the shore of Egilsay island at what was supposed to be a peaceful meeting.