Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 4 Oct @ 20:00
Set on a remote, St. Kilda-esque outcrop, David Greig’s Outlying Islands is a delicate and considered exploration of how human relations and morality alter at the fringes of civilisation. John and Robert are two Cambridge graduates, sent to the island by the government to catalogue birds. The island’s leaseholder is Kirk, an unpretentious, unsentimental man, who is guardian to his unworldly niece, Ellen. The tensions, cultural and sexual, that arise between the two parties propel this simmering slow-burner of a play.
A wild, desolate atmosphere is established immediately by the squawks of seabirds, the crash of waves and an icy blue light. The boys’ shack seems hewn from the craggy rock of the backdrop. You can almost smell the musty animal stenches John gags on as he arrives.
John and Robert’s relationship, carefully conceived and finely tuned, shapes the plot. Simplistically, there are binary splits in their attitudes – gentleman/rogue, conservative/liberated – but these are well nuanced. Robert is, outwardly, the bolder, more sexually confident of the pair. In reality, he has just intellectualised his urges, viewing human interactions through an anthropologist’s eyes. Martin Richardson captures this, making Robert by turns impassionedly professorial or coldly lecherous. James Rottger inhabits John with the same level of understanding, his sense of propriety battling a nascent sexuality. Crawford Logan is perhaps best of all, giving Kirk a sassy, hard-nosed country edge.
Ellen is a trickier proposition as a character. We are told at the start that outlying islands are the most alluring, but then left unsure what the specific allure of this human outlier is to John and Robert, beyond the purely physical and circumstantial. No fault of Helen Mackay, who plays Ellen to the full, but the relationship between her and John seems to require a deeper connection that is not wholly realised in the script. Animalistic instinct and fascination with the primitive explains Robert’s desire, but doesn’t suffice for John. Another small blip is the occasional inappropriate levity. Mainly the light humour is welcome but during some crucial scenes it becomes incongruous.
Minor issues aside though, Firebrand Theatre, here under the direction of Richard Baron, have delivered an atmospheric, soulful revival of a beautiful play.