Arts diary: Filling up is hard to do as petrol station plays (mis)leading role in Highland movie

SHOULD you chance to discover a new petrol station near Dundonnell in the Highlands over the next few days, think twice before pulling in to fill up. Drivers, tourists and even locals have been fooled into trying to refuel at the garage, whose pumps contain not a drop of fuel.

Instead, unwitting visitors have discovered the newly-constructed set for Shell, a film about a father and daughter’s claustrophobic relationship set in a remote filling station. Shell is the feature debut of Scottish writer-director Scott Graham, whose short film Native Son made it to Critics’ Week in Cannes last year, and who was subsequently labelled a star of tomorrow by Screen International. He wouldn’t settle for just any location, producers say, insisting on building the garage in an epic Highland landscape.

The scenery is more than just a tartan backdrop for the father and daughter pair, played by Joseph Mawle and Scottish newcomer Chloe Pirrie – the intensity of their relationship is heightened by their extreme isolation.

“We’ve been careful not to parachute in and have enjoyed fantastic community support,” says producer David Smith. “We’ve worked with locals building the set, the crew are all staying in B&Bs and we’re bringing significant investment here out of season.”

Backed by the British Film Institute and Creative Scotland, Shell wraps up four weeks of filming this week, and the makers are already dreaming of a Cannes screening. Disappointed drivers, however, needn’t travel much further. Graham and his crew have been happy to offer directions to a genuine station in nearby Laide.

Take a bow

Congratulations to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s chief executive Roy McEwan, who earned a richly deserved OBE this week for services to music. The Dumfries-born McEwan joined the SCO in 1993, after a career that included nearly a decade-long stint as administrator of the MacRobert Arts Centre at the University of Stirling.

It brings the honours total for the SCO’s top team to three, if you count the Prince of Wales Medal for Arts Philanthropy awarded to its long-standing patron and supporter, Carol Hogel, alongside the CBE for chairman Donald MacDonald. “It’s a credit to the organisations I’ve worked with and above all the SCO,” McEwan says.

McEwan has been at the Usher Hall with the orchestra in recent days, keeping an eye on recording sessions of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, with which the SCO opened their season under their stellar young principal conductor Robin Ticciati, who though still only in his late twenties is seen as a good future gong prospect. “I’m sure he will get one long before he reaches my age,” says McEwan, who qualified for his bus pass this year. “It just shows what happens if you hang around long enough.”

The Berlioz album is out on Linn Records in April. Meanwhile McEwan is looking forward to the world premiere of Haflidi Hallgrímsson’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra at the Queen’s Hall in December, in the Northern Landscapes concert with soloist Jennifer Pike, the former BBC Young Musician of the Year.

Join the Chorus

Want to sing with the world’s greatest conductors, orchestras and soloists? Next week brings the once-a-year opportunity to join the celebrated Edinburgh Festival Chorus. Chorus master Christopher Bell is running an open rehearsal at the Hub before audition sign-ups.

The chorus, currently around 120 singers from across Scotland – from foresters to therapists, we’re told – has weekly rehearsals from October to June. Recent performances include Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé in 2009, and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin with Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in 2011. Enquiries to chorus manager Helen MacLeod on [email protected] or 0131-473 2027.

Royal bloomers

A pair of Queen Vic’s bloomers are a crowning item for any serious collector of Victoriana. Just such a pair are part of Lyon & Turnbull’s forthcoming sale of the contents of Old Battersea House, the London home of the Forbes family.

The sale, a considerable coup for the Edinburgh auctioneer, could net up to £4 million, and includes rather more serious items such as Millais’ picture For the Squire, with an estimate of £500,000-800,000. The house was bought in 1970, and subsequently filled with furnishings by Malcolm Forbes and his son, Christopher “Kip” Forbes, in a style that references the publishing dynasty’s Scottish roots and their fascination with monarchy.

Alongside furniture and sundry memorabilia are more than 250 paintings, which range from bizarrely imperial-style portraits of the young Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to a painting by Charles Burton Barber of Queen Victoria on horseback with John Brown – which she gave to her personal servant as a gift – and a striking early work by Scotland’s Robert Gemmell Hutchinson.

The 19th-century bloomers, made in silk, are of formidable size – about three feet square, framed and embroidered VR2, estimated at £2,000-3,000. They come with impeccable provenance, having been shown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in 2001.

The admirable Curt di Camillo, architectural historian and executive director of the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA, which rallies US supporters of the NTS and boasts Kip Forbes as a prominent patron, will give a talk on the highlights of the exhibition next week, with viewing in Edinburgh on 28 October before the auction on 1 November.