Behaviour
O is for Hoolet, Arches, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
THREE STARS
From earliest toddler times, Ishbel McFarlane (winner of the Arches Platform 18 Award 2014) has been at home in the Scots language - even her alphabet book tied the letters to Scots words. Her solo show, O is for Hoolet (owl), acknowledges that upbringing but, in keeping with the "Futures" theme of this year's Behaviour festival, McFarlane references that past to examine the current status of Scots and to make a case for its vital survival on everyday tongues.
She knows, from her own degree studies, that issues of language, culture and identity raise a barrage of questions. She's thoughtfully prepared a clutch of them beforehand which she hands out to the audience on numbered cards. If this "call and response" interaction lends intimacy, it also gives an oddly haphazard structure to the fragmentary material that McFarlane has culled from researches, anecdotes and personal memories. The facts, hypotheses and opinions are interesting, albeit in a somewhat academic way but the welcome leavening agent is writer/director/performer McFarlane herself, as she slips from one voice to another, conjuring up the chequered past of Scots in classrooms, academe and Government. There's sly wit and a lovely sense of humour in what she does, but it all catches fire when she reverts to her own experiences, shape-shifting from the little girl whose friends "correct" her Scots into English, through to the student discovery (in university archives) of a 1970's recording of her mother singing a folk song, thrillingly sweet-voiced but with dutifully anglicised lyrics. McFarlane reclaims the song, and the Scots identity of her ain folk when she ends by lilting Jock o' Hazeldean. Beyond braw.
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