Theatre

Whisky Galore/Uisge-Beatha Gu Leòr, Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

TWO STARS

Sadly not even the thimble-ful of free whisky pre-show can help this particular production to go down merrily, as intended. Not even the frisky enthusiasm of the versatile bi-lingual cast, nor the brisk pace set by director Guy Hollands, can tide us over the gulf between concept and actuality: the play veers, like the whisky-laden ship in Compton Mackenzie's original novel, onto the rocks where it lists in rising tides of whimsy and arch contrivance.

This new Gaelic adaptation by Iain Finlay Macleod - staged in association with the National Theatre of Scotland and Robhanis Theatar - has the fictional history repeating itself as a "play within a play", a device that hints at parallels between Mackenzie's 1943 scenario and the present day. We're still on the island of Todday, in the bar of the Cabinet Minister where, because of cancelled ferries, supplies of the dear amber liquor are running low. That's when a stranger appears, who claims she's descended from those bygone sweethearts, Sergeant Odd and Peggy. Faster than most of us could say uisge-beatha, the locals - all four of them - are re-enacting the Whisky Galore story. The English surtitles more or less keep non-Gaelic speakers up to speed with this to-ing and fro-ing, but the pursuit of knockabout comedy - copious roles switching in the swap of a hat - eclipses the serious undertow in the novel, the subsequent film and now this version. Namely the effect, on an island way of life, by incomers who try to impose their codes, their language, their officialdom on the inhabitants. It's still an issue for our times, swamped here by a very old-fashioned piece of theatre.

sponsored by Heineken