The Whaler’s Wife 

4⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Written by Izzy Gray 

Directed by Beth Morton 

Three Quines, Marion, Elsie and Bess are seeing off the whaling boats from Hamnavoe, now Stromness in Orkney. Marion the feisty wife gives the boat and whalers an eyeful as she drops her knickers and moons them all. 

Elsie is glad to see the back of her heavy drinking man George. Three to six months of peace. 

Bess the younger of the three and only married a year is up to high-do. Marion tries to comfort her by saying its three to six months without “manky oaxters” 

When Marion comes on stage, she hangs up a dress, and says “some stories should never be told” 

The script is written in Orcadian which gives it a lyrical almost ethereal feel to the words. 

Left behind by the men folk the women of the Island keep it going with some illicit smuggling, the town is built on a warren of caves making it easy to transport goods. Why is Bess found down there, when she doesn’t smuggle the booze?

Joyce Falconer is fabulous as Marion; she can get her tongue round the Orcadian words perfectly and belt them to the back of the room. 

Shawney Henderon as Elsie is a convincing wife happy for the whaling trip to go ahead.

Emma Tracey as the more paranoid of the three plays it well.

I would say apart from Joyce some of the dialogue was hard to tune in to and it was easy to miss some of the plot points. 

The play is peppered with sea shanties sung by the women, helping to set the scenes, sometimes happy, sometimes sad. But always excellently sung under the vocal arrangements of Bethany Tennick. 

The play is based on historical fact and folklore; the men did go to Greenland and sometimes mistaken for mythical Finn-Folk-shapeshifters who could steal you away. 

The women know the truth, but by telling it the structure of their very lives would change. 

The older women remember when whales could be caught and killed in the harbour, as overfishing has happened. The men have had to go further away from their homes to continue the hunt. 

Will we discover the significance of the person the dress represents? 

You will need to get a ticket for the tour to find out.

As Marion says “Some boats make it , Some don’t. Some bring back more than they will ever wash clean”.

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