Bondagers and the Straw Chair

Two plays of haunting lyricism by one of Scotland's most dynamic playwrights Bondagers, winner of the LWT Plays on Stage Award 1990, draws out the shadowy figures of women exploited as cheap agricultural labour in the Border country of the last century, evoking the rich sounds of a way of life, lived in servace to the gentry. In The Straw Chair, set in the first half of the eighteenth century (1735-40), seventeen-year-old Isabel and her minister husband arrive from Edinburgh on the remote island of Hirta (St Kilda). Their encounter with the island's isolated inhabitants, and especially the outspoken and fearless Rachel of Grange, will change their lives for ever.Bondagers: "One of the finest plays of the modern Scottish theatre. It is raw an drough, warm and tender, funny enough to make your heart dance and movine enough to steal it away...This is a play that everyone should see." (Scotland on Sunday) The Straw Chair "A beguiling combination of things, starting with the incredible story of Lady Grange, banished by her husband to the remoteness of St Kilda. Hung around this framework is an evocation, as light and sharp as spindrift, of the strange life on the island." (Scotland on Sunday)