Crown Court Hotel, Inverness, until Saturday 12 June 2004 then touring

WHISKY AND TARTAN are the official themes of this year’s Highland Festival, and while Miniatures avoided the latter entirely, it was firmly focused on the subject of Uisge Beatha. Alastair McDonald, the artistic director of the Highland Festival, ensured that the show would avoid the worst stereotypes associated with its theme by inviting five writers of proven prowess to conjure up their own intoxicating visions inspired by the subject (as distinct from, but not necessarily excluding, the substance).

There was a fair amount of delirium involved in the resulting quartet of short plays, most notably in George Gunn’s The Whisky Express, in which one Dosher Swanson (Brian Smith), a deck hand on a herring boat in Wick in 1922, is taken on a magical whisky-fuelled ride by the Norse God Odin (Jodie Campbell), disguised as a Salvation Army captain (strange place, that Wick). Smith’s evocation of the drunken sailor’s cosmic experience is something of a tour de force, and both actors did full justice to Gunn’s evocative language and passionate vision.

Gunn’s play was set on the last day before prohibition was enforced in Wick, and Hamish MacDonald also chose the Prohibition Era as his setting in Slainte Mhath, Mr Capone, a transatlantic comedy with a cynical vision of how the wheels of business really turn. His musical fantasy postulated the saving of an island distillery through the agency of the infamous Al Capone and his New York counterpart, Arnold Rothstein, desperate to find drinkable booze rather than bootleg hooch to oil the wheels of their nefarious empires.

Hamish’s play employed the whole cast of seven actors, including Chris Craig and three musician-actors, fiddler Jonny Hardie, accordionist Sandy Brechin and singer Annie Grace. Music was central to all the plays, and also provided a bridge between them in each half of the show.

The opening play, Dave Smith and Euan Martin’s One for the Road, chose a contemporary setting and an overtly comic approach. The writers conjured up the atmosphere of an impromptu Hogmanay party among a group of street revellers after the Big Party is cancelled.

The show would hardly have been complete without an evocative Hebridean tale, and Ian Stephen supplied just that in his amiable monologue The Barra Boys, a mysterious tale of seafaring men being manipulated by women with mysterious powers over the wind, vividly told by Ron Emslie as the storyteller.

Miniatures plays at the Crown Court Hotel until Saturday 12 June 2004, and then tours to the following venues:
Village Hall, Connel, Tuesday 15 June 2004
Village Hall, Dalwhinnie, Wednesday 16 June
Village Hall, Carbost, Thursday 17 June
Village Hall, Rogart, Friday 18 June
Knockando Distillery, Saturday 19 June

© George MacKay, 2004