Whisky Galore! The Making of a Fillum

Published Wednesday 7 February 2007 at 16:30 by Pat Ashworth

Giles Croft brazenly takes a single known fact - that the director of the famous Ealing Comedy ordered a rewrite of the screenplay at the eleventh hour - buttresses it with a few other pieces of documentary evidence and invents this highly plausible and truly delicious tale of a hastily assembled meeting at Compton Mackenzie’s home on Barra.

Here, in the half-light of a failed generator, the author, his secretary and his great-nephew are pressed into joining the director, producer and lead actress for a reading. They have to play all the parts between them, using whatever comes to hand be it tennis rackets, a chair on wheels or a sink plunger. It’s wry and gentle Scots stuff that induces a quiet chuckle rather than an outright laugh.

This is a slender play, almost a studio play, and you wait in vain for any of the Croft trademarks of ambitious spectacle and technical wizardry. Even the ending is almost low-key, though with a very neat twist also based on fact. The pleasure lies in the rising glee and reckless confidence of this ersatz cast as they get involved in the story. The gauche great-nephew (Tim Smith) turns into a resourceful soldier and the famous actress (based on Joan Greenwood) relishes the role of telephonist.

Richard Shelton as Joseph Macroon typifies the pragmatism and archness of the wily islanders as they outwit the posturing Sassenach Captain Waggett (Robert Austin). Not to be missed by lovers of the ‘fillum’, whose spirit it wholly captures.