The Buke of the Howlat
Reviews
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman
After night falls in the woods at Brodie Castle, just west of Forres, something remarkable is happening. Among the trees, there’s light and colour and wonderful music, mixed with the sounds of voices speaking Scots; and there’s a cast of more than 50 community performers and professional actors, all passionately committed to bringing back to life the ancient Scots epic The Buke of the Howlat, written almost 600 years ago, in the woods around nearby Darnaway Castle, by Orkney-born clergyman and poet Richard Holland, a servant of the Douglas family. The show begins with the four songbirds – nightingale, blackbird, thrush and lark, played with terrific flair by Andy Clark, Annie Grace, Angela Hardie and Gary Collins, in gorgeously-coloured costumes by designer Becky Minto…in the hands of performers such as Grace and Clark the sheer beauty and magic of Holland’s poetry is beginning to weave its spell, singing out across the centuries. There’s no overstating the scale of what producer Kresanna Aigner, Young and director Ben Harrison have achieved in presenting this important and joyous show, as part of Aigner’s increasingly impressive Findhorn Bay Festival; it feels as though a fire has been lit in Moray that will not be extinguished, in terms of bringing Holland’s work, and the culture it represents, back to life.
Keith Bruce, The Herald
The community performers in Morna Young’s adaptation of Robert Holland’s early Scottish text were an essential part of Ben Harrison’s production, which was a brave response to a challenging brief from festival director and producer Kresanna Aigner. The script gives the four professional actors – Annie Grace, Angela Hardie, Andy Clark and Garry Collins – a tough brief as both the players in the story (with Hardie the highly ambiguous owl of the title) and the narrators as blackbird, thrush, nightingale and lark respectively. That Young keeps faith with much of the content and political intent of Holland’s text, and supplies a deal of its historical context as well, via the four feathered friends, is undeniable…An achievement of which the performers, amateur and especially professional, can be proud.