Music

Para Handy - A Highland Voyage, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

FOUR STARS

It was hot work below decks. The stoker had taken the captain's order to throw on more peat a bit too far and the puffer's air conditioning was struggling to cope. Or maybe the Traverse's central heating hadn't been adjusted to accommodate an Easter heatwave.

Let's go with the former explanation because it's more in keeping with Allan MacDonald, Iain MacLeod and Russell Hunter's recreation of Neil Munro's Para Handy tales and a spin-off album that in an age where popularity's milked for every penny, looks like pretty shrewd, prescient marketing for a 1960s TV series.

Munro's humour is much gentler than today's stand-up comedy but with MacDonald as the redoubtable skipper and MacLeod and Hunter forming an able crew and all three pitching in with their own observations, this is a show that stands up on its own terms. Indeed, as the tale of the unprepossessing Maggie-Ann faded into a coda of The Ugly Duckling from Hunter's keyboard, the thought occurred, and not for the first time in the evening, that a place in the Hogmanay TV schedules wouldn't go amiss.

We get more than The Land of Haderum Ho's couthy logic, Hunter's mirthful interpretation of the hapless Sandy's lack of success at the Mod, and MacDonald and MacLeod's splendid updating of Duncan MacRae and Roddy MacMillan's roguish Me & You. There are some superb musical interludes, with MacDonald playing pipes big and small and button accordion, as well as lending puffer sounds on a jew's harp, and the songs are embellished with the trio's own wit and personalities rather than being straightforward knock-offs. Chust great entertainment all round.