IAN STEPHEN finds actions speaking as loudly as words in Dermot Healy’s new play for Theatre Hebrides.

IT ALL CAME together when the boat left the quay. Metagama is one of those resonant names, still singing out from the departing stern of the emigrant ship bound from Stornoway to Ontario in April 1923. Shadows of the heads and caps of the actors moved across a minimal projected backdrop. Names of individuals rang out. Names of the specific townships they had left also rang.

For the first time in this new production by Theatre Hebrides, there was a sense of being in a congregation, rather than an audience. We had turned out to take part in a necessary act of remembrance. We were moved because the lists brought engagement with past lives in a way that the opening historical preamble somehow failed to do.

Director Muriel Ann Macleod has a gift for hitting on a subject which matters to the community the drama is set in. Portrona made a character out of Stornoway harbour itself, its very mud smelling of ‘seven centuries of herring guts”. The ebb and flow of commerce, pastoral to urban scenes,  were plotted but individual personalities rang out in Gaelic, East-coast Scots and Stornoway lingo.

Then An Clo Mhor focused on the politics of the tweed industry. Both presented challenges – the first took place in the leaky transit shed on number one pier and the second in a disused tweed-mill. Luckily it was snowing rather than raining on the mill roof so you could watch the flakes fall and add to the clever set.

Portrona (1996) was a true team game, but the many star-turns were gained from Norman Malcolm Macdonald’s poetry. The fisherman’s speech, picturing the dabs obscuring the indigo under the Zulu boat’s keel, shows that the true vernacular voice is as high as any art there is.  And An Clo Mhor (by Henry Adams, in 2000) gained from a compelling performance by Domnall Ruadh, playing the tweed-baron as godfather.

In this new venture, Irish novelist, poet and playwright Dermot Healy began by asking how we came to the 1920s emigrant ship. So the kelp-burners moved to the trenches and then to confrontation to achieve only what they’d been promised, their own plot of land. It was a historical pageant, assisted by projected scenery and the fine unaccompanied singing of Donald Matheson.

The acting was sound but somehow the characters were not individual enough to matter to you.  Not until that departure scene where stagecraft worked better than dialogue.  Ironically it was Lord Leverhulme,  skillfully achieved by Chris Craig whose personality came across. Maybe as an audience, a community, we were just missing defects in the building and the weight of the weather. It was all relatively comfortable with tea or drinks at half-time.

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“The play is a real achievement, playing in Stornoway to full houses. Can it speak out beyond its local setting? All the right ingredients are there.”

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The idea for presenting the ‘Iolaire’ disaster, as part of the journey to the ‘Metagama’, was brilliant – simply the green and red of port and starboard lights and a single narrator.  But the realisation lacked power. Again part of the problem is the precedent of definitive versions. The BBC’s superb recordings caught the moment when old men were ready to talk about one night of terror in their youth.

Roddy Murray’s low key but well-travelled illustrated monologue on The Three Ships , – ‘Iolaire’, ‘Metagama’ and ‘Politician’ was all the stronger for its restrained script. Again Macdonald’s poet-narrator in Portrona, wandering survivor of the ‘Iolaire’, has weight and authority to haunt you for ever.

The second part of Healy’s Metagama followed the emigrants to find another set of promises far from fully fulfilled. Similar techniques were used but this time ensemble-playing developed a wry and effective bantering. The characters seemed to have more flesh on their bones. Rod Morison had real presence as the man whose political awareness develops confidence. Mairi Morrison’s gusto also illumined her roles.

The play is a real achievement, playing in Stornoway to full houses. Can it speak out beyond its local setting? All the right ingredients are there. It just needs tuning – clip the history, allow the characters to breathe a bit. Make the screens a bit larger, a bit higher, the projection a touch sharper. Maybe not over-use the tricks that work so well, like the linking songs. So more scenes will linger in the mind like the names which made it all stark and personal. The brilliance of that made it all worthwhile.

Metagama can also be seen at:
Sgoil Lionacleit, Benbecula, Tuesday 24 August 2004
CastlebaySchool, Barra, Wednesday 25 August 2004
Nevis Centre, FortWilliam, Friday 27 August 2004
Village Hall, Lochcarron, Saturday 28 August 2004
Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Skye, Tuesday 31 August 2004
Aros Centre, Portree, Wednesday 1 September 2004
GlenurquhartHigh School, Drumnadrochit, Thursday 2 September 2004
CullodenAcademy, Friday 3 September 2004
Macphail Centre, Ullapool, Saturday 4 September
NethyBridge Community Centre, Tuesday 7 September 2004
Peterhead Community Theatre, Wednesday 8 September 2004
Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Thursday 9 September 2004
Carnegie Hall, Clashmore, Friday 10 September 2004
Strathy Hall, Strathy, Saturday 11 September 2004
Macrobert, Stirling, Tuesday 14th September 2004
Gilmorehill G12, Glasgow, Wednesday 15 September 2004
St Brides Centre, Edinburgh, Friday 17/Saturday 18 September 2004

© Ian Stephen, 2004