Letter: Called to book

I feel I should point out an error of some importance that appears in the review of the new stage play Doorways in Drumorty (27 October).

Reference is made to the play being "loosely based on the novel Dark Star"; this is quite incorrect as the play is largely based on a book of short stories by Lorna Moon titled Doorways in Drumorty.

That book is a wonderful window on rural life in the North-east in the 1920s and the "couthy-ness" of the keenly-drawn characters, which seem to have failed to charm your reviewer, are the very essence of Moon's stories that have enchanted readers for more than 80 years.

To have manipulated the book writer's work in adapting it for the stage, merely to travel down that populist, well trodden path known as "cutting-edge theatre", would to my mind have been disrespectful to the author as well as destroying the warmth and compassion that permeates every page of her writing and which, judging by the reaction to the inaugural production, seems to have appealed to the many theatregoers who attended.

Mike Gibb

Playwright

Woodhill Road

Aberdeen