The adage "God gave us our relatives, thank God we can chose our friends" may under-emphasise the gift aspect of the deal in favour of its escape possibilities.

If you believe it, however, The Almighty didn't just give Mairi Campbell her forebears, he also called them and thus presented her with family stories that she and her husband, David Francis, have turned into two companion pieces, the Red Earth and Revival, that the couple are currently touring the folk clubs and village halls of Scotland.

Campbell's grandfathers were, on the maternal side, the doctor son of an Aberdeenshire-born Christian missionary to China and paternally, a gifted piper who was saved, literally, at the Battle of Amiens in 1918. He forsook music and strong drink to save souls, eventually leading the Lewis Revival for which he was proclaimed both a phony and the man responsible for shining floods of light on a darkened world.

Campbell and Francis have done much research and marshal a lot of material into two informative, entertaining odysseys that lace moving and tragic but often humorously slanted narrative with fiddle and viola tunes and songs, some entirely original and others featuring their own words set to familiar tunes.

With his brooding, questioning demeanour, Francis handles the roles of The Red Earth's alternatively reverent and wry narrator and Revival's gently mocking observer and fervent practitioner well.

Campbell's wordless, native American-like keening can come over as rather mannered, but her softly enunciated singing on songs such as the couple's own Smile or Cry is a gentle asset in a presentation that effectively integrates theatre with folklore.

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