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Honorary Fellow: Association For Scottish Literary Studies

“If we investigate only by physical and chemical means, we can only get physical and chemical answers.”

Sir Alister Hardy, FRS

Tigh na Triubhais [House of the Trousers]

Commissioned by The Byre Theatre, St Andrews. Premiere 1989. Director Maggie Kinloch.

Chris Parr of the Traverse Theatre had much earlier suggested that a comedy could be written around an inn on Seil Island, Argyll, where 18th century Jacobites on their way to the mainland are reputed to have exchanged the proscribed kilt for trousers. Despite the fact that the story is set in one of the most brutal periods of highland repressions, such a legend seemed to justify a first essay into theatrical farce.

“breathless merry-go-round of a plot .. strangely beguiling show” The Guardian

“the funniest most varied comedy of mistaken identities” BBC Radio Scotland

“farce at full tilt - farce which has got a lot of meat in it” Glasgow Herald.

As is the case with The Sash and The Funeral, any production of this play requires very tight control to avoid an unforgivable trivialisation of the subject matter. So far I have licensed only one further staging - with students in London - directed by Eileen Nicholas of IPB Productions.