DESCRIBED as a love letter to Scotland, Shades of Tay is intended as “a gift to those isolated by Covid-19 and those who feel isolated from theatre in general.”

QUIRKY: Blythe Jandoo in This is Not Schiehallion

Thus a line-up of 18 British playwrights, commissioned by Pitlochry Theatre’s artistic director Elizabeth Newman — among them Timberlake Wertenbaker, Jo Clifford and Hannah Khalil — are producing  weekly audio dramas, podcasts and short films performed by members of the theatre’s summer season’s ensemble.

Digitally available until late November, the series was launched with the 30-minute-long Beautiful Boy by Douglas Maxwell, a painfully moving lyrical monologue, delivered against a shifting, shimmering collage video of the river and its wooded landscape.

Self-pitying, self-accusatory but never sentimental, the vocal input is all important and Richard Standing captures the final reminiscences of a life trapped in failure as son, lover and artist with the  memories sparked by returning to the empty house of his childhood bringing a guilty recognition that “the trick is to see the view as it is, not as you’d want it to be.”

In reality, there is no enchanted forest, only the moving river.

By contrast, This is Not Schiehallion by Ellie Stewart is a quirkily attractive five-minute piece, in which Blythe Jandoo and Richard Colvin are a couple who, in their separate rooms, banter over their virtual step-aerobic climb of Perthshire’s well-known mountain.

Stopping off for a swig of prosecco makes the task a little easier.

Linda McLean’s even shorter prose poem, Miss Georgina Ballantine, has Rachel McAllister offering a celebration of the legendary 1920s angler who is said to have landed a giant 64lb salmon — a generous gift from the Tay, the country’s longest and arguably loveliest river.

View online at pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/whats-on-digital/shades-of-tay.