A book by an Aberdeenshire novelist whose work was once banned in her home town is about to tour Scotland as a play. Jennifer Cosgrove caught up with playwright Mike Gibb to discuss the story of an extraordinary woman who moved to America and became a Hollywood scriptwriter.
“She crammed a lot into her short life. Quite a lady!” says Mike of Lorna Moon, who was born Nora Helen Wilson Low in the north-east village of Strichen in 1886.
Before her death from tuberculosis in 1930 at the age of only 44, Lorna had married twice, had three children including the illegitimate child of William De Mille, the brother of American film director Cecil B. De Mille written an acclaimed novel and short stories and forged a successful career as a film writer.
“Women didn’t go off, leave Strichen and end up as screenwriters in Hollywood,” Mike says. “The story was she got there by seeing a Cecil B. De Mille film and writing a letter to him criticising the screenplay. He wrote back to say: ‘If you think you can do better then over you come!’ It’s a good story I hope it’s true!”
After Lorna left Strichen to pursue a life away from her small village, she never returned to Scotland, but her experiences remained with her, eventually translating into works of fiction.
Near the end of her life, from a sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she penned novel Dark Star and collected short stories Doorways In Drumorty, both of which are set in rural Scotland.
An amusing depiction of rural life in the 1920s, at the time Doorways In Drumorty was published Strichen residents were shocked and outraged to find themselves portrayed as thinly-disguised characters. For this reason, Lorna’s writing was banned from the local library.
These days, Strichen has moved on, and last year a plaque was unveiled in honour of its famous daughter, who died more than 80 years ago.Doorways in Drumorty is at Perth Theatre on September 14, Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh, on September 17, The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, on September 22, the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on September 30 and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on October 5. For more information visit: redragtheatre.co.uk or hamepages.comMike came to playwriting and musical theatre after he retired from the world of business aged 50. A keen reviewer, he had travelled the world writing for and editing show music publications.
For the last 15 years, he has been writing for the stage and his work includes the musical A Land Fit For Heroes, Dundee-themed trilogy Mother of all the Peoples, Five Pound And Twa Bairns and Sunday Mornings On Dundee Law, and Lest We Forget, about the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in 1988.
He explains: “The criteria I work on is I will only write on Scottish subjects but there is plenty to keep me busy.”
Mike admits he had been aware of Lorna Moon for some time, but it didn’t really hit home there could be something for him in her work until he read Doorways In Drumorty.
“They really are excellent books. Dark Star is quite a strange book in that there are bits that are very fanciful, which are unlike the rest of her writing very down to earth.
“It is a novel set in an imaginary place but it was somewhere round about Fraserburgh very much a local village.
“When I read Doorways In Drumorty I thought: ‘Wow, I can see something in this.’ So I began working on it and it came to the point where I had about half a play, but then something else came up and suddenly it was confined to the equivalent of the bottom drawer on the computer.”
Aberdeen-based theatre company RedRag produced Mike’s play Lest We Forget and, when the run was over, a chance conversation with the group led to his Lorna Moon project coming back to life.
Continued…
“They asked if I had anything else they could use for their next production preferably something with a local base. I told them I had been working on the Doorways In Drumorty play and I was about halfway through, so I gave it to them. They came back to me saying it was exactly what they wanted and that I had to go away and finish it!”
Mike found that some of the stories in Lorna Moon’s book translated very well to the stage, but others not so easily. For that reason, he added a tale from Lorna’s other book Dark Star as well as writing two new stories one using her characters and another using her life as inspiration.
“Once I started writing it, it all just fell into place. Her characters are so beautifully drawn it’s really a gift to any writer. It’s just a matter of expanding on things, as she defines her characters so well. It was a great project to work on.
“Each of her stories is only six or seven pages long, yet you feel by the end of it you’ve almost read a book because they are so succinct. A couple of them are very sad, because of the type of village life it was.
“One of them tells the tale of a woman whose husband is away trying to make money in Canada and she is penniless and her family is starving, but she won’t admit to anyone he isn’t sending money she pretends that the letters he sends are money orders.”
When Doorways In Drumorty first toured small venues in the north east in October last year, Mike admits he didn’t foresee it becoming as popular as it has done.
“I wasn’t sure if it would travel beyond that,” he explains. “Then we took it to Dundee Rep for one night and I honestly thought nobody would come and see it. But the audience loved it and it was definitely to my mind the best night of them all.
“Even though the jokes were about a little village in the north-east, it could have easily been any village in their area and they really got the play.”
Due to its success in larger venues like Dundee and Aberdeen, RedRag has decided to tour Doorways In Drumorty the length and breadth of Scotland.
“It’s a fairly comprehensive tour and I honestly think audiences will understand this idea of a small village and how you’re under a microscope all the time and everybody knows each other’s business.”
The play centres on Jessie MacLean, a strong-willed spinster who provides refuge to a pregnant 16-year-old girl. A cast of three perform 12 diverse characters as the various interwoven tales take the audience on a journey that is both funny and poignant.
Mike says: “There are three narrators and then they also play all the other parts too. They’ve got to come off and on quickly. It actually works quite well and keeps it really fast-paced.
“I’m really happy with it and I’m not always delighted with what I write.”
The son Lorna Moon had with William De Mille was adopted and raised by William’s brother Cecil B. De Mille. Only after his father’s death did Cecil reveal to Richard his true parentage.
Richard later went in search of his mother’s Scottish roots finding two siblings and family in Scotland and Canada. He published a book in 1998 called My Secret Mother. He died in 2009.
Although Lorna Moon never returned to Scotland in her lifetime and passed away in New Mexico, her ashes were returned to the country and scattered on Strichen’s Mormond Hill.Doorways in Drumorty is at Perth Theatre on September 14, Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh on September 17, The Byre Theatre, St Andrews on September 22, the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on September 30 and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on October 5. For more information visit: redragtheatre.co.uk or hamepages.com“They asked if I had anything else they could use for their next production preferably something with a local base. I told them I had been working on the Doorways In Drumorty play and I was about halfway through, so I gave it to them. They came back to me saying it was exactly what they wanted and that I had to go away and finish it!”
Mike found that some of the stories in Lorna Moon’s book translated very well to the stage, but others not so easily. For that reason, he added a tale from Lorna’s other book Dark Star as well as writing two new stories one using her characters and another using her life as inspiration.
“Once I started writing it, it all just fell into place. Her characters are so beautifully drawn it’s really a gift to any writer. It’s just a matter of expanding on things, as she defines her characters so well. It was a great project to work on.
“Each of her stories is only six or seven pages long, yet you feel by the end of it you’ve almost read a book because they are so succinct. A couple of them are very sad, because of the type of village life it was.
“One of them tells the tale of a woman whose husband is away trying to make money in Canada and she is penniless and her family is starving, but she won’t admit to anyone he isn’t sending money she pretends that the letters he sends are money orders.”
When Doorways In Drumorty first toured small venues in the north east in October last year, Mike admits he didn’t foresee it becoming as popular as it has done.
“I wasn’t sure if it would travel beyond that,” he explains. “Then we took it to Dundee Rep for one night and I honestly thought nobody would come and see it. But the audience loved it and it was definitely to my mind the best night of them all.
“Even though the jokes were about a little village in the north-east, it could have easily been any village in their area and they really got the play.”
Due to its success in larger venues like Dundee and Aberdeen, RedRag has decided to tour Doorways In Drumorty the length and breadth of Scotland.
“It’s a fairly comprehensive tour and I honestly think audiences will understand this idea of a small village and how you’re under a microscope all the time and everybody knows each other’s business.”
The play centres on Jessie MacLean, a strong-willed spinster who provides refuge to a pregnant 16-year-old girl. A cast of three perform 12 diverse characters as the various interwoven tales take the audience on a journey that is both funny and poignant.
Mike says: “There are three narrators and then they also play all the other parts too. They’ve got to come off and on quickly. It actually works quite well and keeps it really fast-paced.
“I’m really happy with it and I’m not always delighted with what I write.”
The son Lorna Moon had with William De Mille was adopted and raised by William’s brother Cecil B. De Mille. Only after his father’s death did Cecil reveal to Richard his true parentage.
Richard later went in search of his mother’s Scottish roots finding two siblings and family in Scotland and Canada. He published a book in 1998 called My Secret Mother. He died in 2009.
Although Lorna Moon never returned to Scotland in her lifetime and passed away in New Mexico, her ashes were returned to the country and scattered on Strichen’s Mormond Hill.Doorways in Drumorty is at Perth Theatre on September 14, Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh on September 17, The Byre Theatre, St Andrews on September 22, the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on September 30 and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on October 5. For more information visit: redragtheatre.co.uk or hamepages.com