Sea and Land and Sky

Sea and Land and Sky, Abigail Docherty’s winning entry to the Tron’s Open Stage playwriting competition, is sure to become a great example of contemporary Scottish theatre.

Constructed around the diaries of Scottish nurses on the Russian Front during the Great War, Docherty’s script is a pounding, relentless reckoning of mankind’s inability to comprehend the trauma of human conflict. Like Macbeth, the nurses are driven mad by the rising seas of blood which fill the trenches, turning rules to ruins and preservation to desecration.

Director Andy Arnold’s cast of soldiers and nurses is uniformly excellent. Former River City actors Laura McMonagle and Carmen Pieraccini convincingly bear the crutch of insanity alongside Mairi Phillips, challenging the Florence Nightingale image of nurses in wartime with raw sexuality and loss of control.

Hazel Blue’s set design is fascinating. A frozen waste of dirt piles, severed limbs and Beckett-esque trees, the grubby white layered two-level stage is akin to a bloody bandage turned septic. Barry McCall’s sound design too, the haunting, far-off bellows of Scottish folksong amidst the tortured whine of a violin depicts a piteous yearning for home in a hostile environment.

Filled with the gallows humour of the trenches, Docherty’s witty and profound new play is the first of a great career.