In 1760, Scottish writer James Macpherson published a book of fragments of Gaelic poetry translated into English. As the 1760s progressed, he published further poetry, eventually collected under the title The Poems of Ossian, which purported to be the stories of a third-century Scottish bard, kept alive through Gaelic oral tradition. The authenticity of the poems was almost immediately queried. Were they genuine? And given their impact and influence, does it really matter?
From this tantalising set-up, writer and actor Martin O’Connor has spun Through the Shortbread Tin, his own dubious tale, one that uses his imagination to tell a ‘true’ story about myths and how they shape our identities on a personal and national level. The stage from the outset is filled with stereotypical symbols of Scottishness – tartan, shortbread and a stag in the classic Monarch of the Glen pose.
O’Connor himself starts out in the costume of an eighteenth-century Scot with wig, kilt and plaid. However, these are swiftly shed as he takes us back and forth between the eighteenth century and the twentieth, and his own childhood growing up in a working class Glaswegian family.
As he does so, he posits that for Macpherson, the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden and the subsequent systematic erasing of Scottish culture and the Gaelic language would have been a vivid and traumatising experience. Perhaps his Ossian poems were invented, but they told a true story about a disappearing world all the same.
Through the Shortbread Tin is itself a similar sort of creation, one which O’Connor uses to tell a version of his life alongside that of Macpherson. He freely admits it is not exactly ‘true’, but he hopes it tells an authentic truth nonetheless. His modern tale interrogates the commodification of Scottish culture, and the way this has obscured an authentic understanding of the past. It suggests that what is important is not so much exactly what stories are being told, but who gets to tell them.
A significant part of this is the reclaiming and recentring of the Gaelic language. Denied the chance to learn it as a child, O’Connor is making up for lost time, clearly believing it is central to the telling of the Scottish story. On stage he is backed by a Gaelic chorus of three singers, who perform haunting Gaelic tunes throughout.
O’Connor is by no means blind to the complexities of the Scottish story, but his tale does occasionally become unsatisfyingly unnuanced. Macpherson was certainly the victim of appalling snobbery from his English critics, but O’Connor doesn’t touch at all on the fury of Irish critics who felt their heritage was being appropriated, presumably as this sort of inter-Celtic bickering does his version no favours.
Through the Shortbread Tin is its own irreverent and touching origin myth for today’s Scotland (as well as O’Connor himself), a myth that asks what is the point of myths, and what are they really for? Myths might not be true in the most literal sense of the word, but Macpherson and O’Connor both use them to tell us important things about who we are.
Performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on 16 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe
06-31 August (not 12, 19 or 26), 16:45
Transferring to Cecil Sharp House, London as part of Dance Umbrella 13-14 October
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes, no interval
A National Theatre of Scotland production
Written by Martin O’Connor
Directed by Joanna Bowman (2026) and Lu Kemp (original production)
Set and Costume Designed by Emma Bailey and Rachel O’Neill
Lighting Designed by Michaella Fee
Music Directed by Oliver Searle
Sound and Video Designed by Rob Willoughby
Gaelic Consultant: Alasdair Whyte
Cast: Iona Mairead Davidson, Josie Duncan, Mairi McGillivray, Martin O’Connor