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The National
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed cements her place in literary canon
The play tells the story of Shepherd as an author, teacher, hillwalker and lover, and explores the 30-years-delay in the publication of her masterpiece The Living Mountain. Now in its second run in Pitlochry, I did not want to miss. Before entering the studio space, we were told the show was 'very clever' by staff and it had sold out the remainder of the performances. The thirst for knowledge about Shepherd has not been quenched since her appearance on Scotland's five-pound note in 2016. She has taken her rightful place among the great Scottish writers of her time, of whom she was friends with, and with that, becoming a posthumous celebrity. Holding the titular role, Susan Coyle effortlessly shifted as a child playing in the woods with her father, to a young woman teasing a married man, a middle-aged teacher relishing in the outdoors, and an old woman reflecting on her life's work, then later in her final days. Around and around, we were carried, spinning through time and Shepherd's life. Along the way, Adam Buksh joined her, embodying several men who played key roles in her life. He transformed into her father, her lover John Macmurray, an American journalist who tracked her down in 1976, and her mentor Neil Gunn. The periods of her life that were played out each helped capture a full-bodied picture of Shepherd. We saw her as a child in the Quarry Wood by her house in 1901, aged eight – which later inspired her first novel, by the same name, published in 1928 – playing with her father and learning about communication between trees. We were then transported to 1981, to see Nan grown and old, in a care home in Aberdeen slightly lost and confused. These two scenes bookend the play, with us returning to them again for the final two scenes. The play makes clear that Nan was closely attached the granite city, with the audience asked to fill in the evident gap: 'I was born in Aberdeen, I went to school in Aberdeen, and so I teach in …' when we meet her in 1938 in a classroom. Again, none of the staging has been moved, and Coyle doesn't change outfits at any point during the 90-minute production. Yet, it is an entirely different time, place and person in front of us. While embodying Shepherd as a teacher, Coyle asks audience members to read passages written by several authors which relate to Scotland and its literary renaissance of the 20th century. We also hear from Charles Murray, Hugh MacDiarmid, Rupert Brooke, James Joyce, and Thomas Hardy, The delivery of these passages by both Coyle and Buksh ensnared the audience and we were hooked on every word. Later, while going through old clippings with Robertson, a review written by Lewis Grassic Gibbon of The Quarry Wood is found, in which he savagely tears apart her work and her use of Scots language. READ MORE: 20 years, 7000 fans, one folk family: Skerryvore's castle show was for them Gibbon would go on to publish Sunset Song four years later, and we are told by Shepherd that his autobiographer said he never read Shepherd's novel. Robertson is aghast that as a student in the US, he was taught Sunset Song and told it was one of the greatest Scottish novels there had ever been but had never heard of Shepherd or her work which embodies the same world as Gibbon's but came first. Shepherd in 1976 notes her novel was written in Scotland, while his was written in England. The audience is left to make their own conclusion, as historians have been also. Instead of holding the audience in a grudge, we explore the deeper impact of what Shepherd was attempting to do at a time when the world was not built for a 'female feminist Scottish writer,' unmarried and uncovering the secrets ready to be shared by the great outdoors in ways that would rival and overtake any male counterpart. So harsh was this backlash, from Gibbon and others, she locked The Living Mountain away. This is the catalyst of the show, with the direction, sound, and writing using this moment to give the narrative a sense of release once the drawer is open. READ MORE: 'Show some respect': Scots hit out at Danish influencer for 'damaging' protected land The relationship between Shepherd and Gunn is also explored but not with conclusion. The journalist pries into whether love letters were exchanged between the two, who had decades-long written correspondence, but Shepherd remains steadfast that he was her mentor. Again, it's not clear whether the pair were intimately involved but both the writing and direction of the show allows the narrative to be explored without making any conclusions about Shepherd's life. The audience is left to read between the lines of all we know about Shepherd. An Aberdonian woman who wrote before her time, saw beyond her reality, and truly understood what the beauty and intricacies of Scotland's landscape and culture could give to this world if seen in its entirety. Her final moments are played out, with a final scene between Shepherd and her father bringing tears to many in the audience who closed the show with a standing ovation.
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Theatre reviews: Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Nan Shepherd – Naked and Unashamed, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★ Meme Girls, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★ Since she first appeared on a Scottish £5 banknote in 2016, interest in the 20th-century Scottish writer Nan Shepherd has soared. Her restoration to national fame, almost 90 years after the success of her first novel The Quarry Wood, turned out to be timely, as readers began to rediscover both her passionate connection with a natural world now increasingly under threat, and the story of her life as a young woman in a male-dominated literary world. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Susan Coyle and Adam Buksh in Nan Shepherd Naked and Unashamed – Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan It was therefore a fine moment, last year, for Firebrand Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre to launch their studio show Nan Shepherd – Naked And Unashamed. Co-written by Firebrand founders Ellie Zeegen and Richard Baron, the play features just two actors, and offers an 80-minute journey through Nan Shepherd's life in flashback form. When it appeared at Pitlochry in 2024, it attracted such a strong positive response that it has now been revived, with a new cast, for another short studio run. Sign up to our FREE Arts & Culture newsletter at So this year, actors Susan Coyle and Adam Buksh lead us through Nan's story, settling briefly in 1981, the year of her death, before leading us through some key turning points in her life, including her early success as part of a radical literary generation that also included Neil Gunn, Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In a sense, the sheer popularity and emotional power of Baron and Zeegen's play is difficult to analyse; the play sometimes seems almost more like a lecture than a piece of drama, as – in fairly traditional style – it packs in a tremendous amount of information about this remarkable woman, and the age of war and cultural radicalism through which she lived. Yet there's something about the play's insistent loving care for a neglected part of Scotland's cultural history, and about the open, shining character of Nan herself, that makes this tale of her struggles and successes both deeply absorbing and profoundly touching, not least in its tender use of a now old-fashioned form of middle-class Scots. And in this new staging, both Coyle as Nan, and Buksh as all the men who cross her path, deliver the story with impressive skill and passion; with Coyle's Nan truly touching the heart, as a woman of sparkling wit and joy whose sense of humour endured to the last, and who now – in a final irony – finds herself immortalised on our banknotes in a 'Nordic princess' pose she adopted for a laugh, using a discarded strip of film, during what she intended as a much more serious photo-shoot. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Meme Girls Andy McGregor's latest Play, Pie And Pint mini-musical also involves a generation of young Scottish women struggling for creative expression; but in Meme Girls, the time is now, and the play features two teenage heroines growing up in the Clyde coast town of Largs. Jade is a doctor's daughter with a real gift for songwriting, while bestie Clare has had a much tougher life; and together, they begin to navigate the world of online media, performing Jade's songs, and trying to build up a following on YouTube. Their work fails to go viral, though; and after a wild night at a party leads to Clare achieving an instant online fame that has nothing to do with music, their creative and personal relationship begins to fall apart.
