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Following
the success of Kill the Old, Torture Their Young and Ivanov,
David Harrower's latest offering has been keenly anticipated. And it
is indeed an impressive piece, with an intricately crafted plot, generous
characterisation, wonderfully subtle humour and an ambitious thematic
scope.
Ultimately,
it is this desire to cram too vast an array of emotional and political
currents into the production that stops it from really taking off, but
there is ample dramatic substance and incisive commentary to be had
along the way.
It all
starts conventionally enough. Euan and Valerie, twentysomething professionals
from Edinburgh and Glasgow, break down in the featureless, flat heart
of Scotland. They soon find themselves enjoying - or enduring - the
hospitality of farmers Ida and Petey and their daughter-with-attitude
Christine, and the stage is set for a town-mouse/country-mouse comedy
of manners.
It is clear from the start, though, that there is something far bleaker
at work in the play. Predictably enough, Euan soon feels claustrophic
while Valerie is thoroughly disarmed by the unaffected manner of her
hosts, and the slow decay of their relationship is suddenly thrown into
sharp relief. The play turns darker still when the farmers cease acting
as mere foil to the urbanites and the fuill extent of their predicament
is fleshed out - their livelihood mordant, their future uncertain and
their relationships fraught.
It is however the question of Scottish identity which Harrower really
has in his sights here. Petey's despair evokes considerable pathos as
his humiliation is set against the myths of history with which he clearly
identifies, or identified. A brilliant parallel of the loss felt by
both sets of charcaters is presented by way of an unlikely discussion
of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rebellion, with the farmers'
sense of decline from something like greatness juxtaposed to Valerie's
displaced feeling of loss - and attempted recapture - of something she's
not sure was ever hers in the first place.
It is in the character of twenty-year-old Christine that the themes
of myth and identity are brought to the fore. Having supposedly outgrown
her enthusiasm for local history and tradition, she nonetheless takes
pride in it in spite of herself. She's described as 'wise beyond her
years', yet remains unable or unwilling to leave the home she is trapped
in, even when circumstance contrives to take it away from her.
The emotional force of the play is carried by strong performances from
the entire cast, though the natural humour and intelligence of characterisation
of Ida and Petey deserve special mention. It is in the end a powerful
yet distinctly depressing play in which characters either lose or never
find the myths on which they hope to pin their selfhood - myths that
are presented as doomed to failure in any case, and to which contemporary
Scotland offers no alternatives with more than a passing relation to
the reality of the modern world.
27 July to
23 August.
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