Martin O’Connor calls it “the first Outlander effect”. He is thinking about how an image of a country catches on and, factual or otherwise, comes to define it.
Just as the sexed-up Highland romance of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander projected a view of Scotland with questionable historical grounding so, in 1760, James Macpherson captivated the literary world with his rediscovered verses translated from the third-century Gaelic of the poet Ossian.
O’Connor is saying all this as he stands in front of a misty landscape framed like an oval shortbread tin, while wheeling off an outsize stag and a giant thistle from the dislocated set designed by Emma Bailey and Rachel O’Neill. He makes light of the cliches, but in this witty and provocative show for the National Theatre of Scotland, he takes a less expected route. [READ MORE]