A mother and daughter live on an island where they tend a herd of cows that belongs to the monks from the mainland Abbey. In exchange for their work, they get eggs and oatmeal from the monks that help them eke out a meagre living. Their quiet life of interdependence, that is more imbalanced and less benign that at first appears, is set adrift with the arrival of a young man whom they find lying half drowned on their beach.
Behind the seemingly mutual co-operation lies the fact that Brigid (Alison McFarlane) is the result of a liaison between her mother Ronnat (Elspeth Turner) and the late Abbot who must have found time for some sex when he wasn’t helping produce the illustrated manuscript that was the monastery’s raison d’être. When Fari, the young Northerner with his fine Shetland accent (David Rankine), seeks work in the monastery and is given the job of delivering food to the women while collecting milk, he manages to be sexually active with both mother and daughter, resulting in a new pregnancy in young Brigid. (Her mother Ronnat is more savvy about inventive contraception!)
What unfolds is a believable set of dynamics where Fari’s loyalties shift across the narrative as a version of the eternal triangle plays out between him and the two women as they deal with decreases in their ‘payment’ in deference to the completion of the ‘Book’. This metaphor for religious hypocrisy and control; male dominance and female independence is realised with lyricism and raunchy wit in Ellie Stewart’s writing; in the peewit sounds and music from James Wilson all brought together under Gerda Stevenson’s sure and imaginative direction on the primal stone filled set from Gemma Patchett. The cast of three bring equal strength to this tale of birth, death and survival that is ancient and rustic yet so deeply human that it seeps in to modern bones.
Tue 11 – Sat 15 Oct, 1pm; Fri 14 Oct, 1pm & 7pm age recommend 14+