Barry

The remarkable story of Dr James Barry, a distinguished army physician who was born Margaret Bulkley, is told in this intimate Rowan Tree production. That is to say a version of the story, as some blanks have been filled in by the imagination of writer Frederic Mohr.

It is known that Margaret lived as a male from her mid-teens until her death, but also that she gave birth in secret at some point in between, possibly on a posting to Mauritius during a stint working as personal physician to a South African governor.

Changing genders is the least of the challenges facing actress Isabella Jarrett in this solo performance ' that she plays the two character aged twenty-something and then fifty-something demands greater suspension of disbelief. She gives an engaging performance in spite of several hesitations of the kind that in real life might well have threatened to unmask Dr Barry as someone permanently playing a role.

With so much information packed into the dialogue there's little time for reflection ' birth and death offer the only opportunities ' but what's surprising about Mohr's play is how relevant it feels.

In these days of superbug panic one can't help but admire Barry's prescient insistence on washing hands and sterilising bandages, and also be slightly dispirited by his attitude towards female colleagues who hadn't been require to make quite the same sacrifices. Florence Nightingale may well have been an insufferable busy-body, but Barry's contemptuous branding of a pioneering American doctor as a clueless spinster speaks volumes.

On this evidence, Barry was an extraordinary character and pioneering doctor but certainly no feminist, reserving his empathy for the sick while other women fought to earn respect in a man's world.

A version of this review first appeared in The Herald. Toured to Yetholm, Peebles, Walkerburn, Gattonside, Denholm, Lauder and Ettrick Bridge.