MARK FISHER finds a shapeless script hampering investigation of a familiar dichotomy

EVER since the industrial revolution there's been a tension between town and country. Romantics tell us that rural folk are closer to nature, more in tune with the world, and that city-dwellers have sold their souls for the false gods of money and materialism. This is the dichotomy at the heart of The Jonah Boy, a new through-composed musical, set on a Hebridean island where a whale has been washed ashore.

The islanders see the beached creature as an opportunity to invigorate their economically ailing community, plotting to use the massive jaw bone as some kind of tourist attraction. But the city has spoken and it won't be long before the government inspectors arrive to make use of the whale for a museum. In this way, deadening mainland rationalism threatens primal island instincts.

When a teenage boy with learning difficulties discovers he is not an orphan, as he believed, and that his mother fled to the mainland many years ago unable to look after him, we see further evidence that the outside world is a place of dysfunction and the island a symbol of purity. "This is the only place that I have ever felt alive in," sings one character as the city is dismissed as a place of traffic lights and newspapers.

That the boy comes to a sorry end might suggest this distinction is a bit of a cliché. For all the fresh air and fantastic views, island life seems to be heading towards tragedy. Is this the message of The Jonah Boy? We can only guess because Jane Buckler's libretto sets up the distinction without investigating the question further. In fact, it's a piece of writing with no feel for the dramatic, offering a shapeless series of events, the weight and implication of which is hard to fathom.

Richard Taylor's score is imaginatively arranged for piano, cello and percussion, but his vocal lines are limited in range and there's a severe shortage of decent tunes. The students of Glasgow's RSAMD give strong performances, particularly Darren Brownlie as the otherworldly boy with a whale fixation, but given the rambling nature of the libretto, the staging by Sally Rapier and Andrew Panton is inevitably dull.

(Further performances of The Jonah Boy are on 20, 22 and 24 August)

© Mark Fisher, 2008

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