Theatre Alba

"TAMLANE was first performed at the Beldam Theatre in June 1981. The first night was not particularly auspicious, not least because the leading actress was stuck on a train somewhere in Fife, and the part of Janet had to be read by the girl who was doing our wardrobe.

Despite this and some other technical hitches, the revues were good, and by the fourth and last night of our short run, the audiences were good too. Our little company was heartened by the enthusiasm and we resolved to put it on again in the forthcoming Fringe.

We couldn't afford a proper venue. We couldn't even afford to be in the Fringe Programme, but we were given the use of an excellent outdoor space in Regent Gardens at the back of Calton Hill. We opened on August the 16th at midnight, and Theatre Alba was born.

After eighteen years the memories of that production are all a little hazy. But all of us remember a truly magical experience among trees and flaming torches, with a horned moon hanging in the sky, and an enthralling theatrical experience where a play woven from the Supernatural Ballads created spells and wonders of its own.

The heroine of our play, Janet, is a girl reaching womanhood. She is drawn to the dark wood of Carterhaugh nearby her home. There she meets a mysterious character who calls himself Tamlane. He claims that , like her, he is of noble parentage but has been put in thrall by the Queen of Fairies. Janet is seduced by him and resolves to rescue him from the Fairy Host on Halloween. Meanwhile Janet's sister Margaret is similarly drawn to the even darker figure of Harpoon, the Elfin Knight. As Halloween approaches the tensions mount and the powerful Fairy Queen senses a threat to her sinister domain.

The play is set in the Scottish Borders of the 13th century but it really inhabits the world of the Ballads. This is a world rich in metaphor where good and evil, Christianity and paganism, sex and death...all exist on different planes of a reality suffused by allegory. It is a world entirely different from that found in the historical record of the medieval period, particularly in regard to its description of women and women's sexuality. One theory as to why this should be so is that, unlike the other records of the time, the Ballads were written by women."

Eddie Stiven