Táin @ Scottish Storytelling Centre

Lively storytellers Mark Borthwick and David Hughes bring to the stage a warm seat for the audience to relish a narrative painted with blood, sweat and tears. Táin portrays the fragmenting of land and empire, and its performance builds together a world anew, both within the narrative and outside of it.

The duo’s performance is cohesive – one narrates with rhyme and wit while the other enhances the mood with one of a range of melodic instruments. Yet it is also a show carried by its ambience. Through lighting, sound, costume and even the arrangement of the crowd, the performance cultivates a comfort which ripples through the room and enables the audience to embrace whatever gore or tragedy the tale has to offer.

Lighting is a key tool here; it is manipulated, in different colours and hues, as more than an indicator of mood or tension. It also seemingly reflects the extent to which the storytellers are telling the unabridged trutht. Though in its entirety the design awakens drama or delight in the audience, there is no clearer sign of the show’s demand for seriousness than when the lights turn a vivid red.

Táin is not told around a literal fire, but the warmth of the act is central to its narrative and atmosphere. Though undercut by sharp humour and innuendos, the performance makes room for a violent and quintessentially vulgar tale to be wholesomely explored. Whether thanks to its spirited tellers or the shortbread and whiskey they serve at the beginning, the show leaves a sweet, homely aftertaste balanced with the bitterness of battle.

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Táin, Scottish Storytelling Centre (George Mackay Brown Library), until 25 Aug, 3.45pm, £10-12