All for Mairi's Wedding
By Millie Gray
- Price:
- £5.00
Item attributes
- ISBN:
- 978-0-85174-683-8
- Acts:
- 1
- Females:
- 5
- Males:
- 2
Item details
Scottish Play: No. 61A
Inbreeding has become a serious issue in the Western Isles. To counteract this Father Charlie has decreed that all the island's young people are to "court'' new blood on the mainland.
In line with the new ruling nubile Mairi's parents insisted that she give up her island sweetheart, Alastair, and seek some new genes whilst down in Glasgow attending university. Dutifully Mairi complies with their wishes and arrives back on the island with a Glasgow wide boy' fiance, Dustin, and a brassy mother, Lotte, in tow. Mairi's three generation family had prepared themselves for the cultural differences they would have to face when Mairi did finally find a new gene bank' but a proposed son-in-law with a criminal record, spiked hair and a mother who earns her crust as a "professional'' masseuse is more than they had bargained for.
Lotte, who allows nothing to interfere with her daily workout programme, too, is aghast that her "Dustin'' could contemplate marriage with a lassie who comes from a community that is so backwards that they don't exercise, still make their own soup and breast feed their "weans''.
In addition to all this, Alastair arrives home from America with his chosen one, a scantily clad strip tease artiste, and his brother Fergus, who has been away in Glasgow, seeing if he was a suitable candidate for the priesthood. With all this going on the Saturday night ceilidh becomes a riot. After the dance Dustin urges Father Charlie to marry him and his beloved before next Saturday. When Father Charlie points out he can't do this the pair take off, without any fond goodbyes, for Gretna. Mairi's parents erroneously come to the conclusion that Mairi and Dustin have run away because she is pregnant.
However, by the end of the play they find out she is still on the island having been jilted by Dustin, who has run of with the strip tease artiste. Thankfully, they agree that there are worse things than inbreeding and that their innocent, virginal, Mairi should marry an island boy. However, it is not Alastair she is caught doing the preliminaries to "inbreeding'' with but his brother Fergus, who has decided that if he is being "called'' to the altar then it's Mairi's call he's answering.