Theatre reviews: Stornoway, Quebec Traverse, Edinburgh

Stornoway, Quebec, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ****

Scots, Oran Mor, Glasgow ****

THERE’S something about Scotland’s condition as a stateless nation that means there’s never a moment’s peace. Physical peace, mercifully, yes, for the last 270 years and more. Psychological and political peace, though? Barely a chance; instead, there’s always the tussle to define ourselves against oblivion, and to understand more about a national story which often remains hidden from the mainstream narratives that shape our world-view.

And so it is that in Calum L. MacLeod new play Stornoway, Quebec – directed by Muireann Kelly for Glasgow-based Theatre Gu Leor – we find ourselves in a place of which most Scots have never heard; the settlement of Stornaway in Quebec, somewhere between Quebec City and Montreal, named by a group of migrants from Lewis in the 1850’s. The year is 1888; and the town is on edge, as it tries to protect one of its own - the outlaw Donald Morrison - from arrest for burning down a farm of which his father had been cheated.

Enter charismatic female bounty hunter Mairi MacNeil, of Barra and Texas, a gun-toting, whisky-fuelled woman bent on turning Donald in, for reasons more personal than financial. Donald and Mairi are soon snowed in at the local saloon with the French-speaking landlord, his Gaelic speaking wife, and local big man “Major” MacAuley; and after a thrilling set-up phase in the first half, the show dwindles slightly into a messy second half, with too much gunfire, not enough character development, and a vein of pure absurdist comedy, from Daibhidh Walker as the Major, that doesn’t quite match the mood.

For all that, though, Stornaway, Quebec remains a tremendously vivid and robust show about the pains and perils of the Scottish diaspora in North America, about the violence on which those colonial societies were founded, and about the role of island Scots as both victims and perpetrators. The clashing and mixing of languages and song is glorious – with surtitles to help us along – and Becky Minto’s veiled bar-room design sets the scene with economy and elegance. And as we would expect from a show directed by Muireann Kelly, and starring wonderful Scots-Gaelic-English writer and actor Elspeth Turner as Mairi, the show also has a strong feminist edge; as Mairi and Uilleamina the innkeeper’s wife - powerfully played by MJ Deans – finally make common cause against their male tormentors, and emerge triumphant, and free.

The Scottish diaspora in New York, meanwhile, is celebrating its annual Tartan Week; and as part of the festivities, the cabaret venue 54 Below has invited the Glasgow-based Noisemaker team (songwriters Scott Gilmour and Clare McKenzie, director Jemima Levick, and their terrific eight-strong cast) to present the New York premier of their 2022 Play, Pie And Pint hit Scots, about the making of the nation as seen from the perspective of – well – a toilet.

It is a venerable toilet, let it be said, first dug for Scotland’s first king Kenneth McAlpine back in 843 AD, and played with passion and style by Tyler Collins, himself as long, thin and straight as any toilet brush. And there’s no denying the power and passion, or the increasingly thrilling songs for once-silenced groups from women scientists to gay teenagers, with which the show develops its central thesis, as the centuries wear on - the idea that what truly makes a nation is its willingness to cherish all its citizens, to include the previously excluded, and to encourage mutual acceptance and support among all its people. If it can stand the poo jokes, in other words, New York is in for a rip-roaring, rousing entertainment about the values that finally make any community worth living in; whether it’s a nation, or just one of the greatest cities on earth.

Stornoway, Quebec at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 13-15 April. Scots, run completed for now.

Theatre reviews: Stornoway, Quebec Traverse, Edinburgh | Scots Oran Mor, Glasgow