Ghosts are everywhere in Iain McClure’s ChildMinder. Directed by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir, the production has Cal MacAninch playing Joseph, a fiftysomething child psychiatrist returning home from New York to Edinburgh. Here, Joseph’s luxury flat turns out to be the site of a former hospital room where he once assessed a 13-year-old boy in what became a life-changing moment for both of them. With the boy’s spirit remaining, Joseph becomes haunted on every level.

Given that McClure is himself a consultant child psychiatrist who once worked in Edinburgh’s former Royal Infirmary, where the residential Quartermile development now stands, all this sounds pretty close to home. ‘I think one of the big themes of my career has been an awareness of the vulnerability of young boys and young men in society, and what gets branded now as this idea of toxic masculinity,’ McClure says. ‘I don’t really like the phrase, but I can understand how it’s come about.’

What goes wrong for boys is something McClure is very interested in. ‘I’ve been in situations assessing children that are very stressful, because you don’t want to get it wrong,’ he says. ‘Out of that, I’ve written a play where big events from the past come back to haunt the psychiatrist.’ While ChildMinder reflects how psychiatrists can be spooked by their patients on a metaphorical level, McClure’s own beliefs take this idea to something more literal. ‘I do believe in ghosts,’ he admits. ‘I’ve had experiences where I’ve encountered a ghost or something. Not many, but I have. Some people think it’s nonsense, but I don’t. And I think hospitals are places which have a high potential to be haunted, particularly older hospitals, because there is such intensity taking place on a daily basis there.’

McClure’s involvement in theatre dates back to his student days at Cambridge University. His first professionally produced work, BBC Radio 4 production Paint Your Well, starred David Tennant. More radio and stage plays followed, with ChildMinder dating back to 2015 when it reached the top 20 of the Bruntwood Prize For Playwriting. A new piece, The Garden Of Love, is currently being developed with former Tron Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director, Michael Boyd. In the meantime, ChildMinder remains something of a labour of love.

‘I wanted to write a play about a child,’ McClure says. ‘I wanted to write a play about a child psychiatrist. I wanted to write a play about ghosts. People will say, “oh, this is a play about child psychiatry because you’re a child psychiatrist”, but fundamentally, it’s actually a story about a boy searching for his lost mother.’ 

ChildMinder, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 8–Saturday 10 June; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, Wednesday 14 & Thursday 15 June; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Wednesday 28 & Thursday 29 June.