It is in the nature of lighthouses that they have a mystical quality. There is definitely more than a few plays to be had about lighthouses. Currently playing at the Stables theatre is Verity Laughton’s play ‘The Lightkeeper’, a play that has been commissioned by the Mainstreet Theatre Company and its Artistic Director, Teresa Bell.

In Laughton’s play the fine Melbourne actor Ian Scott plays lightkeeper Jack Power, an ex sailor from the closing era of the great wooden sailing ships and for the last twenty years the assistant lightkeeper at an unnamed lighthouse. He has the last watch of the night and there is a boat out on the stormy Southern Ocean that seems to be in trouble. As he watches and waits, Jack announces what brought him the lighthouse all those years ago- the widow Agnes Mary Taylor and her small son, Henry.