By Joy Watters, at the Byre Theatre

This award-winning play by Zinnie Harris blends fact and fiction to tell an almost epic tale of island life and exile.

The island is Tristan da Cunha where Harris’s grandfather was an Anglican priest on the volcanic settlement which is “further from the furthest in both directions.” Annexed by the British in 1816, it hit the headlines in 1961 when the volcano erupted causing the evacuation of the 170 islanders to England.

Prime Productions has come up with a spellbinding revival of this fascinating piece of work, where Harris takes the island as her starting point and creates a series of events and characters from her imagination—and what a fertile imagination it is. It focuses on one family, the Laverellos, just before the volcano erupts. Bill is the unofficial leader and chaplain of the settlement and Mill the matriarch.

They work away on the land, talking in their peculiar dialect, creating a timeless picture for the audience—it could be the 19th century as they scrape a meagre living, guiltily eating penguin eggs when supplies fall low. Mill’s nephew Francis returns from Capetown for a visit with his boss setting in train a set of traumatic events for the family before nature, in the shape of the volcano, changes their lives.

The initial sequences of the piece are difficult to get to grips with, the writing is verging on the melo-dramatic and what with the nature of the language and its old English sound, it is almost like a piece of Thomas Hardy. Here there is a strange scene where Bill and Mill create their own tragedy, dropping two valuable eggs, but it is done in the slow predictable manner of Laurel and Hardy.

The work strengthens, however, in Ben Twist’s direction, and has a wonderful second half which contains a sublime monologue by Mill, who with the others has now been evacuated to Southampton, on the aching void that exile has created. Carol Ann Crawford as Mill gives a tremendous central performance. In the first act, she shows her imagination, she is wonderfully untouched by civilisation, hard working and supportive; in the second, she starts calling the shots. As the islanders long to return home, she becomes powerful.

Jonathan Battersby’s Bill is an intriguing character, spiritual and emotional, sometimes almost prophet-like and again very watchable. The ensemble of five all give excellent performances, Sam Laydon as the displaced Francis, Isabella Jade Fane as his first love and Matthew Zadjac as the boss who cannot remain distanced from the islanders’ plight. It is overlong at nearly three hours, but not to be missed.

The play runs at the Byre until Saturday before a Scottish tour.