There’s no doubt plenty of events in the current Homecoming that are centred around Rabbie Burns’ nice wee poems of two centuries ago, but you don’t hear quite as much about the darker side of what was happening in Scotland then, such as the poor getting thrown out during the Highland clearances. Neil M Gunn’s 1941 novel, on which this upcoming production is based, doesn’t deal directly with that particular historical blemish (for that, see the televised version of John McGrath’s aggressively political yet massively entertaining The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil, showing at the Filmhouse on Nov 1), but it does show what happened to some of the indigenous peoples forced to find a new home. They headed to the coast to fish and were met with an even more perilous antagonist than their old Highland landlords: the sea. The story focuses on widow Catrine who, having lost her husband to the sea, is determined she won’t lose her son, Finn, to it too, but its blue grandeur proves too much for the boy to resist.

Last year’s superior rendition of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song proved Aberdeen Performance Arts’ deftness at tackling classic Scottish texts, and with the excellent Meg Fraser in the role of Catrine and Kenny Ireland taking the helm, this looks to continue the good work. Better than that crass Homecoming advert, anyway.

King’s Theatre, 6 – 10 October