The Straw Chair
Finborough Theatre

INSPIRED by a true, 18th-century story, Sue Glover’s play weaves together the lives of two distinctly different women stranded on the rocky and windswept Hebridean island of Hirta and the strange and dangerous relationship that develops between them.

Lady Rachel Grange has been abducted and held hostage for six years on the island after an acrimonious divorce. Her vicious treatment and isolation has driven her to the point of madness but her fiery spirit is undimmed. The arrival of a puritanical minister, Aneas, and his naive young wife, Isabel, after their recent, unconsummated marriage provides the imperious and blunt-spoken captive with an outlet for her disturbing narrative and candid views on sexuality. 

Siobhan Redmond creates an intriguing Mrs Havisham-style creature in Rachel, parading around the barren island in her dishevelled finery, abusing her servant and clinging onto the past with a feverish determination. Her fierce passion, haughty manner and blunt sexual advice soon pull Isabel into her orbit.

Ingenue Isabel, appealingly played by Rori Hawthorn, is initially a lost soul. Whisked from her Edinburgh home and only speaking a few words of Gaelic she has to cope with Hirta’s spartan lifestyle, a sexually repressed husband, and the traditional beliefs and way of life of the islanders. 

Her gentle nature conceals a strong will and gradually adapting to circumstances, she finds a new freedom and growing sexual awareness in the wild landscape and kinship to the local women.

Finlay Bain creates a surprisingly sympathetic character in the uptight minister struggling with his own sexual and political awakening while Jenny Lee plays the servant, Oona, as a guileless, pragmatic representative of the local women who engages Isabel with the traditional way of life on Hirta.

On the intimate Finborough stage, director Polly Creed manages to create a sense of a unique, isolated world unbound by mainland Scottish social and religious values. From the haunting opening melody to the forced departure of the minister and his wife, the contrasting freedom and restraint offered to the two women by this remote island proves an atmospheric and absorbing production.

Runs until May 14, box office: finboroughtheatre.co.uk