''Outlying Islands'' is a 2002
drama play written by
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
playwright
David Greig. While all the events and characters in the play are works of fiction, it was inspired by Robert Atkinson's book ''Island Going''.
Synopsis
Set on a remote Scottish island in the summer of 1939, two
ornithologist
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...
syoung, impulsive and English Robert and the more-conservative-yet naive Scottish Johnare sent to catalogue the bird colonies on the island. Together with the stern lease-holder of the island, Mr Kirk, and his young niece Ellen, they are the only inhabitants for the summer.
The play ruthlessly uncovers the motivations of its characters, resulting in a painful triangle between John, Robert and Ellen. It is about nature versus technology, old versus new, with the threat of the coming
world war looming over it all.
Production history
The play was first published and performed in 2002 and won a
Fringe First
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...
award and a
Herald Angel award after its premiere at the
Traverse Theatre in
Edinburgh,
Scotland, during the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...
. It was revived at the Traverse in October 2014.
The play was performed by Sugarglass Theatre at the Connelly Theatre in New York in 2016 and later revived at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin in August 2017.
The play was revived in January 2019 by Atticist at the
King's Head Theatre
The King's Head Theatre, founded in 1970 by Dan Crawford, is an off-West End venue in London. It is the second oldest operating pub theatre in the UK. In 2021, Mark Ravenhill became Artistic Director and the theatre focusses on producing LGBTQ ...
in London.
It received an Off West nomination for Best Production.
Casting History
See also
*
2002 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2002.
Events
*March 16 – Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrest and jail the poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and dismiss a newspaper editor following the publication of Mu ...
*
Scottish literature
References
External links
The bookon
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...
's website
A review of the 2004 American premiere in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette*
Fiction set in 1939
2002 plays
English-language plays
Ornithology in the United Kingdom
Plays set in Scotland
Scottish plays
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