Set on an unnamed, uninhabited Scottish island, forty miles from anywhere that people live, this is a play that starts with a prologue that ponders on the fascination exerted by outlying islands, a fascination that increases the further they are from civilisation.
Designer Anna Lewis echoes this with a monochrome seascape of soaring birds and the crags they nest on that relies on David Doyle’s lighting to convert it into a cave-house that was once a chapel and before that a pagan place. It is here that two Cambridge ornithologists, Robert and John, will live for a month as they study the birdlife to report to an unidentified government Ministry. They aren’t sure why they have been sent here but have leapt at the opportunity to conduct their research, especially the study of the Fork-tailed Petrel.
The island’s owner, Kirk, and his niece Ellen have come with them. They live on the mainland but he keeps sheep here and, though his interests are purely in how he can profit, he seems to know more about what is going on. Indeed, it is 1939 in the lead up to war, and the Ministry is involved in a much more sinister project than ornithological research.
There was a real wartime experiment involving anthrax but, though it has a symbolic role here, in contrast to concern for nature, Outlying Islands is about people rather than biological weaponry, death here comes by other means, sexual urges figure more strongly.
Ellen, repressed and under the thumb of her dour uncle, has found her thrills in the cinema of which he disapproves. Fascinated by Stan Laurel, she has seen one Laurel and Hardy film 35 times! Freedom from Kirk’s control releases a confident physicality. Whitney Kehinde makes her lose her inhibitions as easily as she throws off her shawl, and she handles poetic soliloquies with calm assurance.
Bruce Langley’s arrogantly confident Robert isn’t slow in registering Ellen’s possibilities, while teasing virginal John, whom he treats as his junior. Fred Woodley Evans gives John an excitable innocence. There’s quite a lot of shouting between them; at times it is like a Laurel and Hardy relationship. Robert identifies their personalities as Londoner (himself) and Edinburgher.
This is a play which you can take simply as a story or find symbolism everywhere in it. A broken door battered by storm (Christopher Preece’s sound design full of wind, waves and bird cries) could be a war that can’t be prevented, but how a bird could raise a chick in a biscuit tin with the lid closed baffled me! Jessica Lazar’s direction otherwise makes for clarity; her production is strong on atmosphere and pushes pace with Kevin McMonagle’s curmudgeonly Kirk in contrast (especially his later amazing stillness!).