The shipwreck that inspired Compton Mackenzie to write Whisky Galore took place in 1941 off Eriskay, the island north of Barra where, a decade earlier, he had built a house. For all his affinity with Scotland and love of the Highlands, the author was an outsider, brought up in England. It’s appropriate, therefore, that the one serious note struck by Uisge-Beatha Gu Leòr, Iain Finlay Macleod’s Gaelic-language version of the novel, is to do with who has ownership over stories.
Does a tale belong to the old-timer sitting in a Hebridean pub, simply because he’s the one who enjoys telling it? Or is the Irish tourist in search of her roots just as much in her rights to imagine she may get a book out of it? When a culture feels besieged, is it exploitative or liberating to let its stories be told?
This is the one moment of seriousness in a light-hearted adaptation directed by Guy Hollands for the National Theatre of Scotland, but it points to the qualities that make it special. By performing in Gaelic, the actors subtly turn around the story of the islanders and their unexpected haul of Stag’s Breath. It’s not that Uisge-Beatha Gu Leòr is hard-hitting – it’s still an essentially quaint story – but in being told from the point of view of the islanders themselves, it takes on a less patronising air.
It’s also more modern, thanks to a framing device that recalls the meta-theatrical games of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps. Indeed, Macleod seems more interested in his 21st-century characters, as they play with their mobile phones, dance to Stayin’ Alive and fall in love, than he is in the novel’s originals, acted out in broad comic brush strokes. It makes for a brief, breezy and big-hearted staging.
• Until 18 April. Then touring until 15 May.
