There’s mystery in the air at Oran Mor

Do you believe in fairies? Either way, chances are the image conjured up when you think of one is closer to Disney’s Tinker Bell than the powerful, feared creatures they were back in the 17th century.

That’s the historical starting point for Catherine Czerkawska’s third play for Oran Mor, which opens the latest season of lunchtime theatre series A Play, A Pie And A Pint.

The poet and writer has a long-held interest in The Secret Commonwealth Of Elves, Fauns And Fairies – a book written in 1691 by Aberfoyle minister Robert Kirk, which told the stories of people who claimed to have encountered such beings.

Kirk died while out walking in his nightshirt only a year later. Legend has it that he was carried off by faeries angered by his book, and that his spirit is confined in an ancient pine tree on the summit of Fairy Knowe in Aberfoyle.

Czerkawska, who lives in Kirkmichael in Ayrshire, is fascinated by the story and has put it at the heart of her play, The Secret Commonwealth. “It isn’t just about a man who believes in faeries,” she explains. “It’s about two cultures and the loss of the old beliefs.”

The one-man monologue is performed by Liam Brennan, who has previously starred in Wormwood and Quartz, two of Czerkawska’s plays staged at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. Wormwood is now a set text in Higher Drama examinations.

Her first play for Oran Mor, The Price Of A Fish Supper, staged in 2005, went on to the Edinburgh Fringe and was broadcast on

Radio 4. The Secret Commonwealth is being directed by Jennifer Hainey and also features the live Gaelic singing of Deirdre Graham.

It’s up to the audience to decide whether to believe everything they’re told, or use their imagination to read between the lines, says Czerkawska. “There is a sense with the book that it’s a bit of a subversive text,” she explains. “Is he actually talking about the faeries, or is he talking about his own culture, the Gaelic culture, which is being buried by religious and political problems?”

The Secret Commonwealth is the first of 18 new plays to be staged in the latest season of A Play, A Pie And A Pint, of which the Evening Times is media partner.

This 12th season includes the return of Trial And Retribution star David Hayman, the latest work by Rab C Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison, plus the Oran Mor debut of Gregory Burke, whose Black Watch became a global sensation.

Hayman is back at Oran Mor for Patrick Harkins’s two-hander Please, Mister (May 10-15), based on the story of the last man executed in Scotland. Pattison’s Before I Go runs from May 17-22, while Burke’s play Battery Farm is on from March 15-20, part of a five-play collaboration with the Traverse.

Other highlights include Gerda Stevenson’s Wimbledon-inspired drama Federer Versus Murray (May 24-29) and Morag Fullerton’s “lunchtime cut” of Casablanca (April 19-24).