Neil Cooper

When Iain Finlay Macleod moved part time to the Stockbridge district on the cusp of Edinburgh New Town, it was as far spiritually from the playwright, novelist and tweed-maker's Lewis birth-place as it was geographically.

Macleod had decamped to the capital to take up his post as the 2013 Institute of Advanced Studies for the Humanities (IASH) Edinburgh University/Traverse Theatre Fellow, and the original plan was to write something loosely based around the nineteenth century Enlightenment which begat the thinking of David Hume and Adam Smith. Yet, s he spent more time in the area, Macleod became increasingly drawn towards the not always enlightened world of the legal profession. Then, when a friend told him a story about someone looking after a dog which subsequently died, forcing its minder to put its body in a suitcase to take it across town to the vet's on the underground, it became something else again.

The result of such a disparate set of inspirations is The Devil Masters, a black comedy in which a well-heeled husband and wife double act of legal eagles are forced to square up to the city's underbelly.

In the play's world premiere production which opens tonight at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, this comes in the form of a dog-napping ne'er-do-well who inveigles his way into the front room of their New Town des-res on Christmas Eve.

??It isn't entirely a drawing room play,?? Macleod points out, ??but it isn't magical realism either. It went through quite a few drafts, including being quite a straight play, but I do like a darker and more surreal side.??

This stems to unconfirmed rumours that a real life canine will join the cast onstage.

??The dog in the play is a Skye Terrier,?? Macleod says, ??but I've got a whippet, and I was suggesting that we could just shove that onstage.??

The title of The Devil Masters is taken from the archaic lexicon of legalese, and refers to the ancient art of devilling, a period of junior work undertaken by aspiring advocates. In Scotland's legal system, the juniors are put under the wing of a senior devil-master, who, as tradition dictates, must not be a member of the Queen's Counsel. Under their guidance, the devil masters' young charges follow a programme set up by the Faculty of Advocates.

??My cousin is an advocate,?? says Macleod, ??and he went through the process of devilling, where you have a kind of legal family. I wasn't full time in Edinburgh, and moved about a bit before I became fully settled in this great house in Stockbridge, where I wandered about with my nose in the air.

??I know Glasgow much better, so it was interesting to find out something about Edinburgh's history, and to see how Edinburgh folk are a little bit different to Glasgow folk.??

The Devil Masters is Macleod's first play to be produced by the Traverse since I Was A Beautiful Day in 2010. This was the last of a trio of plays to open at Edinburgh's new writing theatre over the previous decade, all of which subsequently toured the Highlands. The Traverse also premiered Broke, Macleod's version of French writer David Lescot's play, Un homme en Faillite.

More than fifty other works across stage, screen and radio have included Somersaults for the National Theatre of Scotland, and an opera, St Kilda, produced at Edinburgh International Festival, and performed in five European countries simultaneously in four languages.

Macleod was also an associate playwright for two years with Playwrights?? Studio Scotland and writer in residence at Sabhal Mor Ostaig.

Beyond The Devil Masters, it was announced that Macleod's new Gaelic version of Compton Mackenzie's famously filmed novel, Whisky Galore, will form part of the National Theatre of Scotland's 2015 season.

Produced in association with Oran Mor's A Play, A Pie and A Pint venture and Macleod's own Lewis-based Robhanis company, Uisge-Beatha Gu Leòr will tour Scotland next Spring.

??The season looks at a couple of classic Scottish novels,?? Macleod says of a programme that also includes an adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel, The Driver's Seat, ??and Mackenzie writes English in quite a funny, comedic way, so this is a bit of a retelling of Whisky Galore from a Gaelic point of view.??

Given the real life backdrop of the story which has been seen onstage in both Mull Theatre's radio version and Pitlochry Festival Theatre's musical take on things, Whisky Galore still has an emotional resonance to people living in Lewis, close to Eriskay, where the incident occurred.

??There's another level of reality to what happened,?? Macleod explains, ??and I don't think the islanders on Eriskay have ever quite recovered from the fact that the film was shot on Barra. You can hardly believe that it happened at all, that this boat full of whisky ran aground.??

As Associate Artist (Gaelic) with the National Theatre of Scotland, Macleod is at the forefront of a focus on Gaelic writing in all forms.

??The development in novel writing in Gaelic has been quite significant over the last ten years or so,?? he says. ??Before then there were only a handful of novels written in Gaelic, but now there are tens more of them. Theatre is getting the best of support now as well, and I'm helping to mentor Gaelic writers through Playwrights Studio Scotland.??

Now safely ensconced back on Lewis, Macleod's sojourn into Edinburgh appears to have laced his own writing with a hitherto untapped wildness.

??I was interested in how people present themselves to the world, and what happens when civility breaks down,?? he says. ??With The Devil Masters I was trying to get under the surface, and see how far people can be pushed. When Orla O'Loughlin read the first draft of the play, she said she liked it, but she told me to put a bomb under it, and that's what I've done.??

The Devil Masters, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, December 6-24.

www.traverse.co.uk