Glengarry Memorial Hall, 12 September 2012, and touring

YOU’LL be a long time looking for the mythical island of Mickle on a map, yet it embodies in its long history, and particularly in the famous “Scota-Land” museum and visitor centre built to house the Crown of Destiny, the purest essence of Scottish island life.

THE Storyteller (Andy Cannon) in a (rather too lengthy) preamble introduces all the island’s characters and a great deal of its history. Here’s Dr Iona Wilson (the very likeable Kirsty McDuff), newly appointed curator of Scota-Land, trying to cope with an unimaginable disaster – the Crown of Destiny is broken. Here’s the quaint old Laird (Andy Cannon), and his frightfully posh Aunt (a nicely observed turn by Wendy Weatherby) and all the other stalwarts of island life – known on Mickle as the Mickleodeons, of course.

Kirsty McDuff and Andy Cannon

Some of them we feel we know already from a long slate of Scottish films, television shows and books like ‘Katie Morag’, but they’re all played by Cannon and McDuff and differentiated by their ever-changing hats.

Andy Cannon and Wendy Weatherby, who wrote and plays the music, have created a beguiling mixture of storytelling, panto, and craftily concealed polemic. Grown-ups will appreciate Dr Wilson’s eloquent tirade against the tired old tartan/shortbread/heather’n’haggis tourist packaging of Scotland, while the Electoral Reform Group could do worse than start thinking about sponsoring the Yes/No ballot basket of knots . “Time for you all to get knotted!, “ cries Cannon cheerfully.

Plenty of jokes for all ages, lots of repetition for the young ‘uns, a couple of singalongs, Weatherby’s lovely music and oodles of audience participation help things along but it still feels, at a good bit over an hour, a little long for an evening show on a school night.

The show was created with Mull Theatre and it shows, both in its confident approach to rural touring but also in its expectation of laughs at the mention of Caledonian MacBrayne and Oban – references which are rather lost on a non-West Coast audience. The journeys of the Crown of Destiny from Egypt to Spain to Scotland and thence to Mickle are repetitive – some judicious tightening up in order to cut quicker to the very enjoyable chase wouldn’t go amiss.

‘Always leave them wanting more’ was ever a good maxim in theatre. Nevertheless, for long stretches of time even the youngest members of the audience are happily enthralled. A good night out for all ages.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

Links

• Mull Theatre