Selkie: Past, Present, Future
★★★★★ Luminous
Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30): Wed 19 – Sun 30 Aug 2026
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Selkie stories abound in Scottish folklore, but you’ve never heard any quite like Niall Moorjani’s in their Selkie: Past, Present, Future, returning to the Scottish Storytelling Centre for the second two weeks of the Fringe.
Moorjani blends the tradition of the mysterious, seal-skinned shapeshifter with allegories on the experience of trans and BPOC people today— while acknowledging that these people, with both their struggles and joy, have always been, even if the world hasn’t always been, isn’t always, willing to recognise or accept them…
Niall Moorjani and Ailsa Dixon. Pic: Supplied.
Ailsa Dixon on cello, joins Moorjani on stage, with live original music and traditional folk songs. Selkie follows the threads of three selkie stories. The selkies of the Past, Present, and Future, each with a unique experience of otherness and finding ways to belong: in a world that doesn’t understand, and in their own hearts.
Moorjani welcomes the audience with casual an eager flair, warming up with a quip about how for anyone who doesn’t know what a selkie is there will be an explanatory bit about seven minutes in (and so there is), before launching into the first story.
Sunrise awakens the forest and all its inhabitants as it always does— except the selkie of the Present, who had slumbered long enough to acquire a coat of moss atop their skin. Sunrise didn’t mean to awake them, but wake they do, for the first time in so long, still feeling neither sea nor land. But that’s not really the beginning of the story, we’ll come back to them.
refuge
Soon we meet Alec, a man who walks the beach looking for oysters and mussels and razor clams and on a very un-normal day he meets the selkie of the Past, a woman who is very beautiful and entirely naked, whom Alec looks away from even though he doesn’t think of women like that. But Alec’s isn’t the only beginning either, and soon we find the selkie of the Future in a cottage on an island off an island where they have taken refuge against the changing political winds of a future that may or may not be our own.
Each of these stories proceeds linearly, but is broken up by switching between them. The switches never quite feel like interruptions, though; rather like the strands of a braid, each has its moment of prominence before being passed from finger to finger to allow the others their time, until at last they form a cohesive whole.
Ailsa Dixon. Pic: Supplied.
Moorjani holds all three with equal care, and their skilful composition of the multifaceted narrative ensures that no details are dropped along the way, returning to each in its time. Dixon’s music supports these transitions as well, in addition to providing atmospheric underscoring for each— and her own moments of storytelling-within-storytelling.
Moorjani’s extended selkie metaphor is perfectly chosen, encapsulating myriad human experiences through the lens of these creatures who are both feared and fantasised about, who must wear or remove certain skins to belong, and yet can never fully belong to only land or only sea; whose liberty can be restricted by external forces, even at times those which claim to love them.
But there is a liberty, too, in the choice to put on or remove certain skins; two things can be true, and no two people, or selkies, are the same.
At times devastating, at times hilarious, at all times generous and genuine, Selkie: Past, Present, Future is a luminous piece of storytelling.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Scottish Storytelling Centre (Netherbow Theatre), 43-45 High Street EH1 1SR (Venue 30).
Wednesday 19 – Sunday 30 August 2026.
Daily: 6.40pm.
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Tickets direct from venue: Book here.
Niall Moorjani website: www.niallmoorjanistoryteller.com
Instagram: @niallmoorjani
Linktree: @niallmoorjani.
Ailsa Dixon website: www.ailsadixonstoryteller.com
Instagram: @ailsadixonstoryteller
Linktree: @AilsaDixonStoryteller.
ENDS
