The Astonishing Adventures of the Chevalier Johnstone

Join us for an evening of swash-buckling derry-do, in a reading of a new play by local playwright and theatre-maker Phil Baarda. We’ll present a dramatised re-telling of the Chevalier’s own memoir, performed – script in hand – by three talented actors.

James Johnstone, aide-de-camp to Prince Charles Stuart and a self-styled Chevalier, fought at the battle of Culloden – and survived.
What followed is a thrilling tale of escape, and continual near-capture, as the Chevalier shook off the Butcher Cumberland’s dragoons as he fled through Scotland and to the continent.
Harried and obfuscated at every turn, with the real threat of being captured and dragged away in chains to a London scaffold and a barbarous death, the Chevalier finally made it to safety after six weeks on the run, dressed for all that time in dung-covered clothes and mostly sleeping in hovels or hedges, and in a series of safe – or not-so-safe – houses throughout the Highlands, Moray, Angus and Fife.

There’ll be a post-show discussion.

The doors open at 6pm for the performance beginning at 6.30pm.