JOYCE MCMILLAN

ON THE pier at Ellenabeich, on Saturday afternoon, Mull Theatre Company are half-way through unloading their van when the weather changes, and great salty swathes of West Highland rain begin to sweep in from the sea. Mull's latest show, Bright Water, is a reflection on the life of Gavin Maxwell, mid-20th-century author, conservationist, upper-class adventurer and author of the much-loved otter book Ring of Bright Water; and the set for the short two-handed drama is not a complicated one. Apart from some basic lighting equipment, there are a couple of upholstered chairs, a lightweight blue gauze backdrop, eight pieces of plywood flooring, a carpet, a box, a tiny side-table and a fragile-looking standard lamp.

But long before a little flat-bottomed boat arrives to ferry the company and its show across the harbour to Easdale, the chairs are drenched, and the paintwork on the flooring is being tested to its limit. On the grey sea, as the boat chugs across the narrow sound, the teetering pile of furniture and people looks comically vulnerable, like an image out of an ancient 1940s movie; and by the time the whole show has been carted up the long slate-lined slipway into Easdale Hall, wet is the hardly the word for everyone involved, from the unflappable boatman, through the three-strong stage management team, to the company's tour manager Mick Andrew, and the actor Richard Conlon, gallantly lending a hand.

Ever since the days of 7:84 - and even before that, with companies such as Glasgow Rep and Theatre Workshop - this kind of "extreme" Highland touring has enjoyed a special place in the hearts of Scottish audiences. But no other company maintains that tradition with such passion - and on such a relatively modest funding base - as Alasdair McCrone's Mull Theatre, which will visit a record-breaking 19 Scottish islands on this current tour; and just a few hours after that rain-drenched arrival on Easdale, I walked into the village hall to find Alicia Hendrick's set looking exactly as it had the night before on Iona, a calm, melancholy, slightly shabby evocation of Gavin Maxwell's last home at Eilean Ban near Skye, enlivened only by a faintly audible squelch whenever the actors sat down on one of the padded chairs.

When it comes to the show itself, Jon Pope's interesting script is framed as a dialogue between Richard Addison as the older Maxwell, holed up at Eilean Ban in the months before his death in 1969, and his much smoother and more genial younger self, played with a fine, glowing poise by Richard Conlon; and the difficulty is that the play seems unclear, particularly in the early scenes, about where the main tension lies between these two figures. Sometimes, the younger man accuses the older of being a "hippy", the first Highland dropout, fleeing the pressures of urban life on an impulse that is bound to strike a chord with many of those who choose to live in the Highlands and Islands today. At other times, though, the play seems more deeply focused on Maxwell's distinctive history as a compulsive loner, whose failure in human relationships both appals and disappoints his younger self.

The result is a show that takes a long time to find a convincing narrative thread. But there are flashes of rare beauty and eloquence in Alasdair McCrone's production, notably in the moments - beautifully illustrated by Martin Low's music - when Maxwell's reserve breaks down in the face of his passion for the beautiful animals that became his life. And by bringing Highland and Island communities together not only for entertainment or practical business, but for a couple of hours of complex, grown-up drama on the life of this fascinating local antihero, this is the kind of show that plays a valuable part in developing the life of those communities, as places not only of retreat from the urban world, but also of real change, reflection, and renewal.

By common consent, Maxwell was an immensely complicated man, a charming, vulnerable and sensitive character who could be also be monstrously selfish and aggressive;