COMMENT

I never knew Scott Hutchison, never even heard his music. Yet on Saturday night at Ullapool Book Festival there were plenty who did, who loved it, loved him, were looking forward to seeing him and Michael Pedersen in the prime 9:30pmslotandwhonowhave to rely on their memories and imagination instead.

His death cast a shadow over this festival: he was, said the festival’s honorary president Chrisdolan,whenhutchison’s fate was still unknown, “one of our own”. And as book festivals are really all about empathy, he would indeed have been among friends, even if strangers.

So: memory and imagination. Sometimes the two came together, as when Angus Roxburgh opened the festival by reading about how, as a 14-year-old, he taught himself Russian with the help of Radio Moscow. There are, even now, few better guides to It’s a far cry from the rip-roaring, rebellious days of John Mcgrath’s 7:84 Scotland, 45 years ago; but all the same, Kieran Hurley’s new touring show for Perth Theatre has that special quality of listening to the voices of a community, and reflecting it back to itself, in its own halls and arts centres.

For the past year, Hurley has been travelling across Perthshire, talking to farmers about their way of life, and their future in the face of Brexit and climate change; and the result is this thoughtful one-hour show, directed by Perth Theatre’s Lu Kemp, and performed by actor-musician and musical director Aly Macrae, and actress Melody Grove.

The mood is relaxed, with a friendly cup of tea to greet the audience, and some community singing in classic 7:84 style; but once the show gets Putin’s Russia. One key turning point, he said, were the 2011 street protests (for which Putin blamed Hillary Clinton) he saw being replicated in the Arab Spring. Incidentally, Roxburgh also raised a point I hadn’t thought of. It’s all gone quiet on the Skripal front, hasn’t it?

Both memory and imagination figure powerfully in the novels and plays of Ann-marie Macdonald, this year’s stellar Canadian guest. Memories of her family’s Cape Breton background fuelled her Commonwealth Prize-winning debut novel Fall on Your Knees, just as ones of her own childhood growing up on Canadian air underway, it soon becomes clear that there can be no agitprop or calls to action here, simply because the issues facing the 21st century farming community, in Perthshire as elsewhere, are so dauntingly complex and profound.

With each performer playing six or seven characters, we hear from shepherds, migrant workers and elderly lady lairds, from big commercial farmers, and new age smallholders.

And whatever we make of their views, there is a rare satisfaction in hearing a nuanced debate about our imminent future that is based on practical realities, rather than on the entrenched positions of identity-driven politics. Some farmers fear the post-brexit loss of the subsidies that sustain a certain level of food production and security, in a country where 40% of the land is already turned over to sporting estates; others welcome the end of the Common Agricultural Policy as a historic chance to do things differently, and more sustainably.

In a sense, Hurley’s show is

“Jane Harris trained as an actor, and gave such an enjoyable reading from her three novels (including this year’s Walter Scott shortlisted novel Blood Sugar) that I’m starting to think a spell at drama school should be mandatory for all writers”