There is a rare power in hearing a text leave the printed page and return to the oral tradition from which it emerged. Having spent some time immersed in the history and legends of early medieval Ireland, I arrived at The Columba Cycle with some familiarity with its source material. Yet hearing these stories spoken aloud transformed what can seem distant on the page into something immediate and alive. As a piece of performance storytelling, The Columba Cycle succeeds most strongly through its atmospheric soundscape, evocative visual design, and accomplished performances. So writes Alena Shmakova for theQR.co.uk…
Music plays an essential role in shaping the evening’s emotional landscape. Anchored by the familiar sounds of the clàrsach and bodhrán, the score expands beyond traditional Gaelic instrumentation to include a Chinese harp, Tibetan singing bowls, bells, and flute. The result is a richly textured sound world that connects the local and the universal. Resonant bells and singing bowls lend an almost ritual quality to moments of wonder, while the interplay of harps and flute echoes the landscapes through which Columba’s story unfolds.
The dynamic between Donald Smith, Marion Kenny, and Heather Yule is equally effective. Through shifting narrative voices, changing perspectives, and occasional choral passages, they sustain energy and variety throughout a demanding programme lasting almost three hours. Divided into Irish and Scottish halves, the production moves confidently between locations, legends, and characters without losing momentum. Atmospheric lighting reinforces the storytelling, bathing the stage in deep greens for woodland scenes and cool blues for sea voyages and island landscapes, while projected artwork provides a visual counterpart to key episodes.
When Rewilding Stops at the Treeline
The production is marketed on the premise to “rewild” Scotland’s epic traditions, a concept open to multiple interpretations. While some may understand rewilding primarily through an environmental lens, others might expect a re-examination of historical figures stripped of later embellishments and devotional layers. The performance clearly embraces the former approach. Throughout the evening, considerable attention is given to the natural world: the waters of Lough Gartan, the hills of Colum Cille’s homeland, the silver beaches of Iona, and the flower-filled machair of the islands. Having visited several sites associated with Columba’s life on both sides of the Irish Sea, I found these descriptions particularly vivid and evocative.
Yet despite its emphasis on landscape, I left feeling that the production’s interpretation of “rewilding” remained narrower than it might have been. While the natural environment surrounding Columba was beautifully realised, the historical and cultural environment that shaped him was less fully explored. Many of the miraculous episodes traditionally associated with Columba were presented largely at face value. Stories such as his birth upon the flagstone at Lough Gartan or the crane that rested upon his shoulder appeared primarily as moments of wonder rather than opportunities to explore the symbolic traditions from which they emerged. The warmed stone on the shore evokes ideas of liminality found throughout Gaelic tradition, while the crane occupies a distinctive place in Irish and Scottish folklore as a creature associated with boundaries, protection, and wisdom. Connecting such imagery to its broader cultural context could have deepened the audience’s understanding of why these stories endured.
The same desire for greater context extended to the production’s treatment of language and history. Columba inhabited a world shaped by multiple languages. A fluent speaker of Gaelic and a trained reader of Latin, he also encountered Pictish-speaking communities in northern Britain. Yet the storytelling was delivered almost entirely in modern English. Even brief passages in the historical languages of the period could have brought this world closer to our modern one. During encounters with the Picts, for example, linguistic difference is largely absent, despite the possibility that Columba and the king may not have shared a common language, making the druid’s role as intermediary particularly significant. Exploring such boundaries could have added another layer of cultural complexity, reminding audiences that the early medieval British Isles were a multilingual world where language could both connect communities and mark the frontiers between them.
“The dynamic between Donald Smith, Marion Kenny, and Heather Yule is equally effective. Through shifting narrative voices, changing perspectives, and occasional choral passages, they sustain energy and variety throughout a demanding programme lasting almost three hours.“
Historical context offered, seems to me, another missed opportunity. This was particularly evident in the treatment of Columba’s exile. The familiar narrative linking the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne to a dispute over a manuscript framed his departure largely through punishment and remorse, despite modern scholarship increasingly viewing the conflict through the lens of dynastic politics rather than personal culpability. Exploring these perspectives, alongside the early Christian concept of peregrinatio—voluntary spiritual exile undertaken as an act of devotion—could have added greater emotional and historical complexity to Columba’s journey, presenting it not merely as an act of penance but as a conscious spiritual vocation embracing sacrifice, uncertainty, and a form of lifelong spiritual martyrdom.
None of this, however, diminishes the production’s considerable achievements as performance. The Columba Cycle is frequently beautiful. Its fusion of music, storytelling, visual design, and performance creates an immersive journey through landscapes that feel both physical and spiritual. Smith, Kenny, and Yule sustain the audience’s attention throughout a demanding programme, while the production’s rich soundscape and carefully crafted atmosphere make ancient stories feel immediate and alive.
Yet for a work that promises to “rewild” Columba’s story, it remains surprisingly reluctant to venture beyond the familiar contours of hagiography. By foregrounding miracle narratives and ecological imagery while leaving historical complexity largely untouched, the production left me admiring its artistry while still searching for a deeper understanding of Colmcille himself: not merely the saint of legend, but the extraordinary and complicated figure whose influence resonated across Irish and Scottish history for centuries.
That is ultimately only a missed opportunity rather than a fatal flaw. Even when I questioned some of its interpretive choices, I remained captivated by its storytelling craft. The Columba Cycle offers a moving, musically enchanting, and thoughtfully realised performance that will leave many audience members inspired to revisit one of the most influential figures in the shared history of Ireland and Scotland.
Featured Image: The Columba Cycle – Image by Hester Aspland
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