Inspired by a chance enchantment with a mist-strewn Hartwood Hospital cemetery through a train window, storyteller Jane Mather brought In the Hartwood, a blend of history and fairie tale, to this year’s Scottish International Storytelling Festival.
Once Europe’s largest asylum, housing 2500 residents, the Lanarkshire facility opened in 1895, only closing 103 years later, and leaving 1,255 people buried in the grounds, unnamed except for the grave of its first chief medical superintendent Dr Archibald Campbell Clark. For the rest, only a number remained to distinguish one from another.
The story, penned by Mather, took the audience into one woman’s dream of the place, and encounters with a cast of characters, beginning with the Fairie Queen. The folk angle thus firmly established, the dreamer’s path led to Hartwood Cemetary, There she found the graves, marked with stakes, numbers, and little else. The stories of those interred below were then embodied by a series of manifest spirits in a somewhat Dickensian sequence of visitations.
Breaking with that template, the dreamer in turn shared stories plucked from Celtic tradition, from Tam Lin’s graduation from his sex forest to Rashiecoats’ evasion of enforced marriage through a little botanical magic. Mirrors of the colourful, meaningful lives of the former living, these tales added a metaphorical dimension to the show.
With a heavy dollop of humour and a wry approach to the material, Mather cut an endearing figure on stage. Accompanied by the singing harp of Heather Yule, there certainly was a touch of natural mystery to In the Hartwood. A new commission for this year’s Scottish International Storytelling Festival, the telling was a touch nervous, but always heartfelt.
Perhaps due to nerves, there was something a little unresolved about the story’s plot, if not its intention. Certainly, the audience, who each received a leaf carrying the name of one of the buried, couldn’t mistake their role when asked to whisper, and then chant their person’s moniker. A less sudden arrival at the show’s final lines could assist the narrative more fully in matching the show’s meaning. Encouragingly, the attention paid to lighting, movement and audience interaction, certainly suggests Mather is a performer with good performing instincts.
An important piece of Scots history, gamely sublimated into a touching and surprising fairie tale, In the Hartwood has the makings of a fine piece of storytelling.
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