Written and performed by Mike Maran
With music by Rona Wilkie (fiddle)
Directed by Patrick Sandford
“Indian Peter's Coffee House” is a caffeine-fuelled, rip-roaring, swashbuckling story of kidnap, shipwreck, slavery, murder, mayhem and skullduggery set in an eighteenth century Edinburgh coffee house, told by Mike Maran with fiddle music played by BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Rona Wilkie
It tells the story of Scotsman, Peter Williamson (1730 - 1799) also known as 'Indian Peter' who was kidnapped in Aberdeen, sold as an indentured labourer to a farmer in Pennsylvania and then was captured and enslaved by native Americans.
He escaped, joined the British Army, and was captured by the French who sent him back to Britain where he published an account of his adventures which implicated the Aberdeen magistrates in his kidnapping.
These magistrates threw him into jail, then ran him out of town, but he successfully sued them and with the compensation he opened Indian Peter’s Coffee House in Edinburgh.
He also published an Edinburgh street directory, ran a private post office, and invented a submarine for commuting across the Firth of Forth to Fife.'
“a thoroughly enjoyable one man show skillfully accompanied and underscored throughout by live fiddle music and snippets of Gaelic song from Rona Wilkie.” The Scotsman ****
