ONE of the gnomic sayings of the Gaelic culture is: ''If a man does
not know something, he will know something else.'' And something I don't
know is what this Mull Little Theatre Company's mixter-maxter of
cross-cultural music, oration and song is about. The something that I do
know is that it is entertaining.
Right from the beginning you don't know whether you are watching a
play, or being part of it -- a kind of MacHair. Alice is a feminist TV
journalist, intent on proving that women are oppressed in Gaeldom. Lisa
Grindall makes what is a sketch of a stereotype believable with a fine,
firey and lightly sardonic touch, a woman half-corrupted but striving
still for her own version of the truth.
She is faced with the grinning, girning and darkly ironic face of the
Gael -- one more aware of the opportunities to exploit the incomer, and
also half-corrupted by the possibility of material advantage.
There is some excellent Gaelic singing from Ishbel MacAskill, above
whose head the Celtic twilight forms before your very eyes, and some
acting that would be awful were it not for its complete lack of
pretension. Iain Morrison as the bilingual Bard could not act his way
out of a paper bag with a flame thrower but is commanding as well as
likable, and the impish musician, Norman Chalmers, plays Flo Hittel
(Gaelic for subtitles) in an alien mask with flashing antennae, as well
as bringing the house down with his dancing puppet.
It's a ceilidh, a complaint and a not very successful try at
discussing the lowlands/Highland and Island dichotomy, but it is also
thought-provoking and fun.
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