When Brandane lived in Glasgow he became deeply involved in the city's theatrical life.
1923 saw the performance of what is probably his most important full length play, The Glen is Mine.
This work has good characterisation and a strong theme, the future of the Highlands: are industry and progress preferable to the destruction of the old Highland way of life?
The ending, however, shies away from a bold resolution and opts for a safer, more sentimental conclusion.

The romantic comedy The Treasure Ship (1924) with its background of the salvaging of treasure from a Spanish galleon supposedly sunk in Tobermory Bay, was followed in 1925 by The Lifting (an extension of the one act The Change House), full of irony and coincidence, set in the south of Mull near Lochbuie, set in the period of the 1745 Jacobite Rising.
It demonstrates the honour and decency of the hero Iain in sacrificing his life to protect the friend whom he had inadvertently implicated in the killing of an "enemy" before the beginning of the play.

John Brandane (the pen name for Dr John MacIntyre) was arguably Scotland's best known resident dramatist in the 1920s before the emergence of that other great doctor/dramatist James Bridie (O. H. Mavor).
He was born in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute on 14th August, 1869.
His family moved to the Bridgeton area of Glasgow and as a boy he worked in a Glasgow cotton mill.
Between the ages of 15 and 27 he was employed as a clerk in a warehouse.
During his latter years in the warehouse he took up the study of medicine at Glasgow University.
In 1901 he graduated and while specialising in surgery at Glasgow Royal Infirmary he met and became a friend of Bridie.
Since he had not taken a holiday for six years, for the sake of his health he obtained his first medical post in a rural practice on the Island of Mull and remained there until 1908.