“Outlying Islands” at Jermyn Street Theatre
Jeremy Malies in the West End
17 February 2025
Director Jessica Lazar begins her portrayal of the island in David Greig’s play Outlying Islands with a snippet from a radio programme about James III of England. Or is it James III of Scotland 200 years earlier? Later, I wondered whether the looming conflict described by the four actors was the First or Second World War.
Whitney Kehinde as Ellen.
Photo credit: Alex Brenner.
Stan Laurel is the unlikely figure who resolves doubts as to time scheme when the ethereal Whitney Kehinde (niece of the island’s owner and love interest for two visitors) confesses to having seen the film Way Out West no fewer than 37 times.
I liked the timeless quality to much of this. Initially, we might think the setting is a lighthouse. It’s all drip feed in Greig’s dialogue and Lazar’s presentation, but we come to learn that we are on an island dominated by a pre-Christian temple in the Atlantic Ocean though not that far out and probably on an outcrop in the Inner Hebrides. There are references to Skye and Rùm. What is made clear is that the island is in danger of being used for a sinister military experiment.
Working with some of the theatre’s permanent stone structure, designer Anna Lewis uses two huge canvas boards to give us an almost monochrome depiction of granite cliffs as well as the gulls and terns being studied by a pair of young Cambridge scientists played by Bruce Langley and Fred Woodley-Evans. The whole set could be a daguerreotype.
Greig’s many sources of tension in the plot stem from the young men’s rivalry for Ellen (the character played by Kehinde), distrust of her uncle Kirk played by Kevin McMonagle, and a gulf between Christianity and the island’s pagan origins. There are many reminders that the one room shown in the settlement has served as a temple in earlier centuries and perhaps as much as a millennium ago.
The dialogue made me imagine the outside as one of Powell and Pressburger’s films on the Scottish isles. Lewis references this sort of background skilfully with the few props and her design for the costumes. Clearly a census is going on. Langley and Woodley-Evans convey their characters’ interest in wildlife and the scientific method but the stakes are always higher. We know that the island is being assessed at other levels. “Birds kill but they never massacre” says one of the boys. There is about to be wholesale slaughter on this island.
The elderly Kirk sees Stornoway (main town on Lewis with Harris) as a den of iniquity. “Women have begun to uncover their heads. Cinemas have arisen.” McMonagle shows his range later by playing an army officer with a complete change in diction and bearing.
But these cultural references are add-ons compared with the underlying Darwinian imperatives about predation and choice of mate both in the bird and human worlds. The death of a chick should be seen as offering extra room for more hardy examples of the species. Greig strips everything back so that these could be the Hebrides as written about by Pliny. The tension is wound down occasionally, notably when the young people sing “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” from the film. And the lyrically written sex scene in which two people lose their virginity is handled with restraint. Lazar understands how less can mean more and it proves truly erotic.
Christopher Preece’s sound design includes single discordant notes on the organ that hint at the dreich outside. Elsewhere the music is more lilting and suggestive of a tide, so underlining Greig’s repeated point that humans are essentially sacks of water.
David Doyle’s lighting has subtle shafts that suggest a sea fret leaking in. At times he pares this back so that a paraffin lamp seems to be the sole light source. Extended comic business with a defective door which might have proved ghastly is inventive.
Outlying Islands premiered in 2002 and the same creative team as here at Jermyn Street staged the play at the King’s Head Theatre in 2019 though all the cast members have changed. The project has a disarming purity and sincerity. Shafts of humour within a plot that in less skilled hands might become melodrama mean the action goes through the gears impressively. Kehinde is outstanding, particularly when her character says that she has been in and out of dreams. Greig gives her a few lines that suggest Lady Macduff. It’s the tone of reverie that is the undercurrent. “Do you think it’s normal to be happy at death?” she asks.
The play is new to me. I’m sure that it deserves this iteration. That does not mean to say that I should want to see it 37 times, but I know that yet more subtleties would be apparent on a second viewing. Paired with a recent version of The Maids, this production forms part of a small venue’s exceptional start to 2025.
