Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey – Traverse Theatre

Opening in the post-war Western Isles, guitarist and vocalist Willie Campbell of The Metagama Ensemble, along with his fellow musicians, set the scene of Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey with its first musical number.  We learn of the large groups of islanders, who due to a lack of opportunity, money, and depopulation from the war, decided to make the journey all the way to Canada on the ocean-liners SS Metagama, Canada, or Marloch. 

With traditional Scottish music being the focal point, it is accompanied with archival footage, illustrations (constructed by Doug Robertson), and narration by Dolina Maclennan and writer Donald S. Murray.  Featuring not only original music by pianist and vocalist Liza Mulholland, Murray, and Campbell, traditional Gaelic songs are interspersed too, sung by John Joe Macnell, with Christine Hanson on cello and Charlie Mackerron on fiddle.

There is a significant focus on the Gaelic language and its deterioration, with stories of the Hebridean emigrants struggling to adjust to speaking English as their primary language, facing disconnect, isolation, and homesickness.  Metagama certainly feels like somewhat of a reclamation of a language once lost, and one maybe soon to be again, with the vast majority of modern Scots not being able to speak their native language.  And while I myself, who had a Gaelic-speaking grandfather, did not know what was being sung, I certainly felt the meaning.  Metagama demonstrates the intuitive, poetic quality of Gaelic.  While many of us Scots might not be able to translate it, we understand it through music in some hereditary, congenital sense.  A letter written by one of the Hebridean emigrants even remarks that they cannot express themselves wholly in English – the words do not encapsulate the full essence of meaning as they do in Gaelic.  And while expression through language may have been fading, expression through music stays firm, with Mulholland touching on the Scottish influence on music in Canada and America and vice versa.  We hear the jazz of the prohibition era blended with the ceilidh tunes that played in the Lewis Society dances that began to pop up in American cities as the islanders emigrated further afield.

This show is a beautiful tale of community lost and found – Metagama manages to provoke a sense of fellowship between the audience as we think of our ancestors and the marginalisation of our culture – there comes a sense of community in loss and longing for home.  When Macnell sang the traditional Gaelic songs, much of the audience joined in ghostly chorus – a poignant reminder that this story is not one of a community lost, but one remembered and with us still.  The culmination of music, poetry and storytelling, makes for a hauntingly stirring piece of work, with the writing managing to say so much with so little.  I couldn’t say why Metagama touched me in the way that it did (with tears streaming for the vast majority of the first act) but it is certain that Murray and Mulholland have devised something of such relevance, highlighting a solidarity in otherness.  The Hebrideans weren’t alone, joined by Jewish people escaping Weimar Germany, Polish people, Spanish people, nationalities from across all of Europe travelling to America for a better life.  This feels especially important seeing the ICE raids and deportations in America which primarily target people of colour.  America is a country of immigrants, including those in power – they are about as native to the land as the ethnic minorities they chastise.  Funnily enough, Donald Trump’s own mother migrated from Lewis to the US in 1930 – I’ll leave you with that…

Reviewer: Jessie Martin

Reviewed: 1st November 2025

North West End UK Rating: