Cape Wrath

Alexander Kelly’s one-man ode to his beloved late grandfather, rural Scotland and the intrepid joy of travel is comfortably the most enjoyable hour you’ll spend trapped on a stationary bus (if that sounds like faint praise, it’s not supposed to).

Taking place entirely inside a white 12-seater parked outside St Stephen’s, the play recounts Kelly’s recent mission to retrace one of his granddad’s “jaunts”, as his grandmother called the lone forays up north the mildly eccentric old gent was prone to taking. This particular trip, undertaken in the 1980s largely by bus, led him from his Midlands home all the way to Cape Wrath, the remote, windswept northwesternmost tip of the UK where he paused for just a couple of hours to stare at the sea and think about his life.

Told largely through first-person narrative, as Kelly clambers in and out of the vehicle’s different doors, there are several nice touches to make it all feel that bit more lively and personal – Ordinance Survey maps to unfurl and squint at, a shot at completing one of the many bamzoozling word puzzles granddad enjoyed inventing for young Alexander. Even some shared provisions.

Kelly’s performance is a little faltering, but full of warmth. While Cape Wrath lacks real emotional or dramatic heft, it’s simple message is heartfelt: committing “acts of remembrance”, large or small, for departed loved ones is important; and can draw us closer to people whom we perhaps never fully understood.