On Alex Salmond’s Royal Wedding Outfit, And Related Political Topics – Column 29.4.11

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JOYCE MCMILLAN for The Scotsman 29.4.11
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PHEW, THAT was a close thing. I realise that there’s widespread agreement that it would take a fairly spectacular disaster, now, to derail the SNP bandwagon rolling towards victory in next week’s Scottish Parliament election. Yet I can’t help feeling that a bad picture of Alex Salmond in a tail-coat, dressed up like a large dish of fish for today’s Royal Wedding at Westminster Abbey, could have done the party’s popularity more damage than seems reasonable. These are image-conscious times, after all; and no-one wants their First Minister to look daft, particularly in front of the massed ranks of the English establishment.

As it turns out, though, the First Minister has decided to wear a smart lounge-suit, with a saltire tie; and his wife Moira will be wearing a hat which her husband has described as “nice”. The First Minister has even gone on record with the news that the invitation to the wedding specifies that guests should wear lounge suits; which only makes this week’s hoo-ha the more puzzling, over David Cameron’s decision to appear in morning dress, and Nick Clegg’s indecisive scramble to be upsides with him.

Behind all this foolishness, though, there lie some serious questions about the current shape of Scottish political life, and its relationship to the ritual being played out at Westminster today. On the nationalist side of the argument, there are those who find Alex Salmond’s relaxed and even affable relationship with the Royal Family both puzzling and inappropriate; in their book, the whole point of Scottish independence is to get away from all this British tradition and symbolism, and to transform the country into a people’s republic.

And on the Unionist side, there are those who persist in portraying Alex Salmond as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, an outwardly clubbable sort who, given the chance, will suddenly rip the British state asunder, and unleash constitutional mayhem on an unsuspecting nation. It was this view of Salmond that the Scottish Labour leader was presumably trying to reinforce on Monday, when he relaunched his faltering campaign with an attack on the SNP leader as “downright dangerous”.
In truth, though, both the SNP republicans and the fear-mongering Unionists are increasingly out of touch with Scottish opinion; and the reasons why are pretty obvious.

For in the first place, it’s simply a mistake – made by the SNP fundamentalists, and compounded by Scottish Labour – to imagine that this Scottish Parliament election is in any way about the issue of independence; on the contrary, it hardly features on most voters’ radar. Scotland has just lived through a four-year demonstration of how difficult it is for an SNP minority government at Holyrood to achieve even a referendum on independence, far less an actual victory in such a referendum; and so long as the SNP does not win a landslide victory – made extremely difficult by our additional-member voting system – that situation is not likely to change. What does concern voters is the relative competence, determination and coherence of the two main parties in defending Scottish interests at a time of severe cuts in the UK budget, and a conscious assault on the public sector by a right-leaning Westminster government; and in that competition, Alex Salmond and his team seem to be winning, hands down.

Then secondly, there is the simple truth that in the 21st century world we now inhabit, national sovereignty is always qualified by other considerations, and no longer matters nearly as much as it did eighty years ago, when the modern SNP was taking shape. When Alex and Moira Salmond take their seats in Westminster Abbey tomorrow, they will be sitting alongside representatives of nation-states – Ireland, Greece, Portugal – that have entirely lost their economic sovereignty in the recent economic crash; and also of federal governments in Madrid, Ottawa and Berlin that can barely act without taking account of their most mighty and economically powerful regions – Catalonia, Quebec, Bavaria. It’s economic strength and resilience, as much as constitutional independence, that now determines the extent of a nation’s power over its own fate; and all Scottish politicians would be well advised to remember that, in their last few frenzied days of campaigning.

And in terms of the monarchy – well, as Alex Salmond has understood, the British monarchy, at least under its present incumbent, has vast experience of negotiating the shifting sands and subtle nuances of modern sovereignty and statehood, and understands the terrain far better than any Westminster government. The Queen remains head of state in Canada, Australia, and many other Commonwealth countries, despite their political independence; and as Buckingham Palace is well aware, there is no technical reason why she should cease to be Scotland’s head of state, even in the event of Scotland becoming indpendent.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Prince William will inherit his grandmother’s skill in navigating the changing politics of Union; the growing Thames-Valley insularity of the modern British boss-class will inevitably make his task more difficult. Until the distant day when Scotland’s republicans find themselves in a decisive majority, though, it seems likely that Alex and Moira Salmond will have to get along with the royals, including William and Kate.

So they might as well enjoy their day at Westminster, and sing along lustily with the mighty traditional hymns the couple have chosen; Love Divine, Cwm Rhondda, and William Blake’s Jerusalem. And as for the idea that the wedding itself, or the Salmonds’ presence at it, will do the SNP any electoral damage – well, I think not. For every republican disgusted by the spectacle, and every Unionist driven tearfully back into the arms of Annabel Goldie by the emotion of the day, there will be half a dozen who will feel relieved that although Alex Salmond is a nationalist, he is not about to destroy every aspect of the Union; and is capable of sharing the happiness of a young couple who seem genuinely glad to be together. And the more that moderate message is received and understood, the less reluctant Scotland will be to vote SNP; and the stronger the likelihood of a second victory for Alex Salmond, come next Thursday.

ENDS ENDS

David Greig And Dunsinane

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on DAVID GREIG AND DUNSINANE for Scotsman Arts, 28.4.11
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THERE’S A TYRANT in power, hated by many of his own people. There is growing unrest, as rebel leaders plot his overthrow. And there is one rebel commander who is willing to go to a mighty neighbouring power to ask for military help in toppling the tyrant; boots on the ground, entering an unknown country to effect regime change, and – in theory – to instal a new and more enlightened system of government.

In the past decade, it’s a story we’ve heard every night on the news; the story of Iraq, of Afghanistan, and now – to some extent – of Libya. Yet it’s also the story of one of the most famous plays in all of world literature; the story of Macbeth, in which an English intervention force, led by the English general Siward and the rebel Scots lords Malcolm and Macduff, comes north to Macbeth’s fortress at Dunsinane, to end his rule, and instal Malcolm in his place. And it was this profound parallel with the events of the last decade that gripped the imagination of leading Scottish playwright David Greig, as he watched a series of productions of Macbeth back in 2004; and made him want to write the play that became his acclaimed drama Dunsinane, premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London last year, and now preparing for its Scottish premiere at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, in a first-ever co-production between the RSC and the National Theatre of Scotland.

“I remember that I was sitting watching Dominic Hill’s production at Dundee, in 2004, when I suddenly thought – yes, but what’s interesting is not the toppling of the tyrant, it’s what happens afterwards. I suddenly saw all these extraordinary parallels with the Iraq situation, just at the point when things had started to go very badly there, following the invasion in 2003. The second flash was just this sense of the geography – I was in Dundee, and suddenly the place-names in the story seemed very real, very nearby – Fife, Birnam, Dunsinane, Inchcolm, Scone.

“And then there was a sense of irony that this play that is known everywhere as “the Scottish play” should have been written by an English playwright. It’s something about history always being written by the victors. So I thought that the whole story was just ripe for speculation, both as theatre and as politics. There was the real story of Macbeth, who was actually a much better king than we give him credit for. And there was this need to write the story from a Scottish perspective.”

Greig freely admits, though, that the plays he writes often defy his original intentions; and Dunsinane is an unexpected play in at least two ways. Set mainly in the fortress of Dunsinane after Macbeth’s final defeat, and full of a fierce tragi-comic poetry of its own, the play explores the triangular relationship between the English general Siward, the newly-installed Scottish king Malcolm, and the surviving queen, Gruoch, who is not dead, but alive, well, and more than capable of disrupting their best-laid plans; Siobhan Redmond is set to repeat, in Scotland, what has been hailed as an electrifying performance in this role.

Dunsinane is, though, primarily what Greig calls a “squaddie” play, about the plight of the English soldiers, shipped up from Kent or Essex to spend a miserable winter in a frozen and boggy northern region where most of the people hate them. To say that these soldiers recycle some common negative stereotypes about Scotland is to understate the case. They ping them about like snooker-balls; and like Gregory Burke’s Black Watch – a play which influenced Greig’s decision to keep his Macbeth sequel in period, rather than attempt another modern squaddie story – Dunsinane could be accused of showing plenty of empathy for the invaders, and less for the invaded.

“Well, that was about wanting to reverse the situation we find in Macbeth. In that play, Shakespeare writes Scotland; I wanted to write England, and to explore the position of those English soldiers as they gradually find that they have bitten off so much more than they can chew. Afghanistan had begun to dominate the news as I was writing the play, and the analogies there were just as stunning as in relation to Iraq, in terms of the effort to impose successful regime change on a mountainous country with a clan-based social structure. So yes, I do write about that with an English soldier’s voice. But when you see the play on stage, I think you’ll see that it’s the Scots who have the very highly-developed, delicate filigree of a civilisation, into which this invading force has marched; and that in many ways, it’s more sophisticated than that of the invaders.”

Greig admits, though, that he himself is slightly uneasy about the extent to which his play becomes “a warning against altruism”, and against the good intentions embodied in the English general, Siward. “The character that developed into Siward is almost like some nation-building DIY man, botching the job despite all his best intentions, just as Tony Blair was the politician who wanted to do good in international affairs, and ended up being detested for it. It’s about how we want virtue in public life and are drawn to it, but then find that it’s not directly correlated to results. And that’s unsettling.

“Just in case all that sounds a bit cerebral, though, I have to say that a lot of the appeal of doing this lay in the sheer energy of Macbeth, and the cinematic thrill of the storytelling. I read a great story somewhere that Shakespeare had seen James VI and I, the new king just arrived from Scotland, sound asleep at the theatre, and had resolved to give him a story that would keep him awake – and not just by throwing in a lot of witches, although James was obsessed with them. So what I hope is that audiences in Scotland will enjoy the play, and find it thrilling. And I think that just by being Scottish, they’re bound to deepen the response to it; I hope so, anyway.”

Dunsinane at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 13 May – 4 June, and at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, 7-11 June.

ENDS ENDS

From Paisley To Paolo

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on FROM PAISLEY TO PAOLO at Oran Mor, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 27.4.11.
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4 stars ****

IT’S MORE than 30 years, now, since John Byrne first immportalised Paisley as one of the new centres of the creative universe. So it’s slightly sad to find that the place has apparently slid backwards again, towards a new celebrity-age dependence on the illusion of self-esteem that comes from a distant association with the latest local boy made good.

In Martin McCardie’s new lunchtime Play, Pie and Pint show, an excellent James Young plays Jack, a 24-year-old Paisley lad whose best career offer so far has been the role of a chicken in an on-street advertising campaign. His fortunes improve slightly, though, when he wins three tickets for a rock festival featuring local hero Paolo Nutini; so along with his best friends Charlie and Mavis (Mavis is a boy, by the way) he heads off for a weekend of festival hedonism, all multi-coloured pop-up tents and folding chairs.

It should be said that Stuart Davids’s slightly under-rehearsed-looking production hardly flatters McCardie’s 50-minute popular comedy, disrupting some of its tragi-comic rhythms. In a few brief scenes, though, the play develops the material for a genuine post-modern Scottish buddy-movie, tackling big 21st century themes of work and worklessness, sexuality, celebrity, roots, friendship and identity with an impressive lightness of touch and vividness of character, as well as a crowd-pleasing dollop of all-male sentimentality.

So Alan Tripney’s Charlie is a fine new comic stereotype, the guy who finds it easier to pretend to be gay than to try to be butch. James Kirk’s Mavis a gloriously eccentric character, a trainee undertaker with a demanding mother and a wryly realistic world-view. And Jack is the new Scottish everyman, desperately trying to sort out illusion and reality in a world that wants to keep him confused; and finally determined that whatever happens, he will not be abandoning his roots, or betraying the mates who give his life meaning, and even a little joy.

ENDS ENDS

Ivan And The Dogs

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on IVAN AND THE DOGS at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, for The Scotsman 23.4.11
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4 stars ****

PEOPLE WHO write about theatre use different words to describe it; but in recent times, a strand of performance has emerged that signals a profound change in humankind’s view of its once-central place in the universe. Some people call it dis-human theatre, others use the word post-human; and it’s an understated yet deeply challenging version of that feeling that seems to inspire Hattie Naylor’s remarkable monologue Ivan And The Dogs, based on the true story of a child who survived on the mean streets of 1990’s Moscow by living with a pack of dogs.

Presented at the Traverse this weekend in a powerful touring co-production by ATC and Soho Theatre, and first conceived as a radio play, Ivan And The Dogs certainly depends heavily on the spoken word. Rad Kaim, as Ivan, talks softly and intensely for an hour or so, barely moving from his perch in a stark box-shaped space on stage, as he leads us through the story of a ravaged city, where Ivan – aged only four – leaves his mother and violent stepfather, and finds his only sense of love, security and trust in the company of a pack of five wild dogs.

For all its theatrical simplicity, though, Ivan And The Dogs is transformed into a compelling live performance by director Ellen McDougall and her team. The Russian city soundscape by Dan Jones is magnificent, as are Duncan McLean’s eerie and beautiful images of Bjelka, the great white dog that first adopts Ivan. And if the sensibility of the piece finally has as much to do with a traditional British passion for animals as it has with the politics of the ruthless new Russia, it still raises some profound questions about the species we are; and whether we any longer have the right to claim a human monopoly on values like trust and compassion, or on the very idea of an immortal soul.

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Dangerous Corners And Troubled Times, As Scottish Unionism Fades Into History – Column 22.4.11

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JOYCE MCMILLAN for The Scotsman 22.4.11
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THIS WEEK, two significant – perhaps even seismic – events shook the surface of Scottish political life, adding a new edge to what had, until recently, been a lacklustre election campaign. On one hand, it emerged that real parcel bombs – amateurishly made, but potentially lethal – had been sent from locations in Ayrshire to Neil Lennon, the manager of Celtic football club, and to other prominent Celtic supporters.

And on the other, a new opinion poll showed Alex Salmond’s SNP now eleven points ahead of Labour in the race to lead the next Scottish Government. On the face of it, these two news stories are unconnected; as SNP leader, after all, Alex Salmond has always been eager to project an image of a bright, modern 21st century Scotland, which has left the old days of sectarian division far behind.

Yet at another level, both of these events seem to me to reflect a deep shift in the nature of Scottish politics – and therefore in the politics of the United Kingdom, as a political union – which is almost bound to produce some unpredictable and shocking effects. For what is happening, in a nutshell, is that the old alliance of Scottish opinion which supported the Union with England is losing power, at an unprecedented rate. The Conservatives blew their reputation with Scottish voters back in the 1980’s, when they threatened the welfare-state deal that was the foundation of the postwar British state. Now, the post-Blair moral and intellectual weakness of the Labour Party, the last great pillar of Unionism in Scotland, has opened the way to a new Scottish politics, dominated by a party which is, at least nominally, committed to the breakup of the UK.

And even at the level of sentiment and symbolism, Scots seem increasingly inclined to opt out of the emotional narrative dreamed up by the London-based media. We do not identify with the posh-boy government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, at any level. And as for next week’s Royal Wedding “fever” – well, if there’s anyone at all in Scotland who wants to hold a street party on that day, they are certainly in a very small minority.

It’s therefore small wonder that in some places around Scotland, where a traditional form of sectarian and Rangers-supporting Unionism has been an important part of collective identity, a kind of panic has set in, a desperate sense that the Unionist tribe is dying out; and that a tiny hard core of people has been crazy and criminal enough to express their fear of extinction by trying to kill and maim others. So far, the public response to the parcel-bomb incidents has tended to take one of two positions; either that they reveal the strength and depth of anti-Catholic sentiment in Scotland, which must be dealt with directly and severely, or that they are the work of a few lunatics whose actions mean nothing, and who do not deserve the oxygen of publicity.

In truth, though, neither of these positions is quite right. The actions of these people do signify something, in their desperate violence; but what they reveal is not the persisting strength of the militant Protestant tradition in Scotland, but its terminal weakness, in an age when even those who identify most strongly with it no longer have any living connection with the religious tradition to which they refer, and when that tradition itself is fast disappearing, in terms of active transmission to the next generation of Scots. Today, only 18% of Scots – most of them over 50 – attend church regularly; and despite our frequent depiction in the London media as a nation stuck in the past and riddled with dark sectarian passions, we are in fact – give or take a few percentage points – almost as secular as the English.

These incidents therefore raise some profound questions for the next Scottish government, particularly if it is led by the SNP. Alex Salmond is largely right to see modern Scotland as a mostly secular society, in which religious sectarianism is dying a slow natural death; yet there are still some problems, related to sectarianism, which require action. One is the plight of working-class communities that have been devastated by economic change, where reactionary and vicious forms of tribal identity sometimes provide young people with their only sense of significance and purpose.

The second is the steady perpetuation of sectarian attitudes through football, and in particular through the confrontation between Rangers and Celtic. That this is now largely an empty form of tribalism – without any real religious or political content – almost goes without saying. Yet still, gangs of men from all walks of life in Scotland get together on match days to bay for violence, and to taste the heady stuff of mindless tribal identity; and it’s this reification of hate, with all its grim historic resonances, that the next Scottish government will have to bring to an end, if it is to succeed in portraying Scotland as a modern secular society, with a bright future.

Then finally, there is the question of the Union with England, and its place in the Scottish life. It is self-evident that the Union, as a political idea, matters less to most Scots than it once did. Yet at the same time, the social, commercial and personal links between Scotland and England have never been closer; or our two societies – in this media-driven global village – more fundamentally similar, united by both contemporary experience, and a remarkable shared history.

It’s therefore essential – as we move towards a period of greater devolution and possible independence – to approach these huge changes in the spirit of moderation embodied by Alex Salmond and his ministers, rather than in the spirit of aggression and rejection shown by some SNP supporters. A spirit, that is, that acknowledges the value of what’s past, as well as looking toward the new; and that is prepared – both practically and psychologically – to deal with more dangerous corners and explosive reactions, as the old British state begins to drift apart, and either to reform itself, or to crumble for good.

ENDS ENDS

Dancing At Lughnasa

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on DANCING AT LUGHNASA at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 22.4.11
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3 stars ***

THE NEWS that Dominic Hill has been appointed as the new artistic director of the Citizens’ Theatre has been widely welcomed, given his strong track-record at Dundee Rep and the Traverse. And one of his first jobs, when he arrives in Glasgow in October, should be to make sure that this fabulous theatre has more exciting material to fill its main stage than this respectable but routine touring production of Brian Friel’s great 1990 play, presented by the Bury St Edmunds-based Original Theatre Company.

Set in Donegal in the summer of 1936 – when Friel himself would have been a child of seven – Dancing At Lughnasa famously captures a final moment in the lives of five sisters living together on their family’s smallholding, while social forces far beyond their control begin to destroy their familiar world. To Michael, the seven-year-old son of the youngest sister Chrissie, the summer seems like something of an idyll, as his adult self looks back at it.

It’s Friel’s genius, though, to create a play which also embodies a huge, looming sense of the pressures that make change inevitable; from the new radio on the sideboard singing out seductive love-songs and jazz riffs, to the fragility of a harsh official Catholicism which can hardly compete, any longer, with the pagan vitality and wisdom of older pre-Christian traditions.

Alastair Whatley’s decent production goes some way towards representing all this, without ever seeming to feel it in the blood. The Donegal accents are uncertain, the style a shade anaemic. And although Victoria Carling gives a vehement and deeply human performance as eldest sister Kate, and Daragh O’Malley is subtly unhinged as the family’s disgraced priest brother, Father Jack, the rest of the acting is somehow forgettable, in a mighty play that needs to be staged with less elegiac gentleness, and more anger, energy and flair.

ENDS ENDS

Pandas, The End Of Hope The End Of Desire

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on PANDAS at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and THE END OF HOPE, THE END OF DESIRE at Oran Mor, Glasgow, for Scotsman Arts, 21.4.11
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Pandas 4 stars ****
The End Of Hope, The End Of Desire 4 stars ****

THE TIME IS the present, and in a flat somewhere in Edinburgh, a couple are arguing; in fact, they’re on the point of separating for good. James is a police inspector, who drinks to blot out the horrors that he sees during his working day; Julie is a woman on the make, hungry for money and romance on a scale he can never provide.

Out on the Meadows, meanwhile, under the springtime cherry blossom, a Chinese girl called Lin Han and an Edinburgh-Chinese boy, Jie Hui, are discussing whether a year of online chit-chat and photo-sharing, culminating in Lin Han’s visit to Edinburgh, has brought them to the point of marriage; she thinks it has, he seems less sure. And outside a nearby office, Julie’s secret lover Andy is waiting, not only for Julie to arrive with the lost key to his business premises, but for Jie Hui, with whom he thinks he’s about to clinch a deal; and also for a fate of which he has as yet no inkling, inflicted by his raging former partner, an entomologist called Dr. Madeleine Murray.

This is the situation around which Rona Munro weaves her much-anticipated new play, Pandas, which premiered at the Traverse on Tuesday night; and at a time when Scotland seems, if we believe the news headlines, to be doing its best to live up to its traditional image as a place of compulsive street violence and mindless bigotry, it’s as delightful as it is thrilling to find one of Scotland’s leading writers producing what can only be called a world-class romantic comedy, full of wit, sophistication, wisdom, optimism and desire.

This is already a key month in Munro’s career, following the general release in Britain of the Jim Loach film Sunshine And Oranges, for which she wrote the script, and the opening in London of Little Eagles, her new play about Soviet space programme of the 1950’s and 60’s. With Pandas, though, she finds a whole new style for her full-length drama, romantic in structure, yet savagely clever, funny and observant in tone; and the result is a hugely enjoyable, generous and sexy play about the hazards of the early 21st century mating game, played out against a backdrop of rampant individualism, sky-high expectations, near-total sexual freedom, and unlimited online opportunities, stretching across the global village, and into the fast-changing relationship between China and the west.

Rebecca Gatward’s production – with gorgeous design by Liz Cooke, lighting by Colin Grenfell, and sound by John Harris – is a fine, brisk, polished and yet passionate piece of work, that gives full value to the laugh-out-loud hilarity of Munro’s comic one-liners, while never losing sight of what’s really at stake here, in terms of the survival of the human capacity to love and be loved, alongside other endangered species.

As for the actors, no praise is too high for an ensemble of only six players, who carry the whole weight of our struggling urban civilisation such lightness and energy that almost every scene is a pleasure to watch; and the play offers one of the great must-see moments of recent Scottish theatre, in Meg Fraser’s fabulously erotic performance as Madeleine, the slightly dowdy academic who suddenly discovers the meaning of desire in the most improbable setting. Traditionally, Scottish writers have not been famous for their interest in sex and romance. Thanks to Munro and her fabulous generation, though, all that has changed; and now, at the peak of her powers, she writes about sex in a Scottish accent, with a passion, humour and intelligence that sometimes takes the breath away.

Nor is that the whole story about an extraordinary week of romance in Scottish theatre; for at Oran Mor in Glasgow, the gifted young writer/actor/director David Ireland has conjured up a 50-minute romcom of his own, The End Of Hope, The End Of Desire, which – despite its gloomy title – matches Munro’s work every step of the way in terms of wit, tenderness, and generous insight into the way we live now.

The play is set in present-day Belfast; and as it begins, Dermot and Janet are sitting up in bed, after a one-night-stand that began in the pub and ended up at Janet’s place. The complication is that Janet is wearing a mouse costume, furry mask and all; and when Dermot invites her to take it off, we are plunged instantly into the most complex, hilarious and fascinating exploration of the female struggle to escape from the tyranny of the perfect body-image we can never achieve, and of the “masks” we all wear when we embark on the dangerous business of starting new relationships.

Not content with that, though, Ireland also adds a ruthless insight into the political and cultural context within which Dermot and Janet meet – in terms of religion, class, and taste – to create a fiercely interesting and complex short play that speak volumes about the minefield of modern urban relationships, unsupported by traditional ties of kinship and community. In Ireland’s own perfectly-paced production, Robbie Jack and Abigail McGibbon give two magnificent performances, as the Irish poet and the East Belfast check-out girl respectively. And the moment when Janet finally removes her mask is as poignant and beautiful a piece of theatre as any writer could hope to create; an ordinary, unglamorous woman unveiled in all her vulnerability and inner beauty, praying that the man standing in front of her will be able to look through the stereotypes and love her despite her imperfections, and despite all the social divisions that might have been constructed to keep them apart, to dull their desire, and to destroy their chance of a whole new life, richer, more generous, and more fulfilled.

Pandas is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until 7 May. The End Of Hope, The End Of Desire, at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday.

ENDS ENDS

Clockwork

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on CLOCKWORK at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 15.4.11
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4 stars ****

THE IDEA that the story is partly about storytelling itself has become so common in children’s theatre as to be almost universal. Just when you think you’ve seen everything this genre has to offer, though, along comes a tale as sophisticated and magnificent as Philip Pullman’s Clockwork, dramatised here as a 70-minute touring opera for audiences over 7, and co-produced by Visible Fictions and Scottish Opera.

Set in the little mediaeval town of Glockenheim, Clockwork is played out mainly in the town tavern, where the locals gather to tell tales. One tale is unfolding as they speak; Karl, the clockmaker’s apprentice, has suffered a creative crisis while making a mechanical figure for the town clock to mark the end of his apprenticeship. Meanwhile, Fritz the storyteller is recounting a macabre unfinished tale about the local royal family; and a related tale about the birth of the baby prince, some years before.

All these stories have themes to do with technical hubris, and how things go wrong when we try to replace the human mind and body with ingenious machines. If the stories honour humanity, though, they also reflect on creativity and love, and on the responsibility of the artist to finish his work. Douglas Irvine’s adaptation is brisk and beautiful, his production sometimes a shade over-elaborate in visual detail, as it juggles sets and terrific puppets by Kenny Miller, and strong woodcut-style visual images by Tim Reid.

Dave Trouton’s music, though, is never less than entertaining, delivered by a fine cast of three with two on-stage musicians. And if the more workaday sections of the score fail to achieve the haunting power of the lost child’s song that conjures up the little Prince, this remains a strong and beautiful story, about the responsibility we take on when we set out to create something, and the evil that can flood into the space we leave, if we abandon our task.

ENDS ENDS

Educating Agnes, Six Black Candles, The Dacha

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on EDUCATING AGNES at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, SIX BLACK CANDLES at Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow, and THE DACHA at Oran Mor, Glasgow, for Scotsman Arts, 14.4.11
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Educating Agnes 4 stars ****
Six Black Candles 3 stars ***
The Dacha 3 stars ***

IT”S A FEATURE of great classic plays that they never stand still; they have their periods of obscurity, and then suddenly flare into life again, full of energy and meaning. For decades, Moliere’s 1662 masterpiece The School For Wives has looked like a brilliantly-made stock comedy, full of classic stereotypes of ageing buffoons and sweet young things.

Suddenly, though, the new internet age of sexual fantasy has given a sharp contemporary twist to its theme of sexual grooming, and the apparently perennial desire of some men for a partner who is both implausibly young, and completely compliant. Today, online fortunes are being made every day from the impulse that Moliere dramatised so sharply three and a half centuries ago. And if there is one writer who might have been born to spot these connections, and to transform them into a stream of fiercely witty and thought-provoking dramatic verse, it’s Scotland’s Makar Liz Lochhead, whose brilliant 2008 version of School For Wives has now been given a fine second production at the Royal Lyceum, as the final play in a memorable spring season of shows with a strong female twist.

Moliere’s play tells the story of a middle-aged man, Arnolphe, who wants an innocent young wife who will not make a cuckold or a fool of him. His plan, therefore, is to marry his 17-year-old ward Agnes, an orphan he has adopted as a baby, and educated in a nunnery, far from the wicked world. Agnes, though has other ideas. She has spotted and fallen in love with a handsome young chap called Horace; and Moliere’s comedy is shaped around the cheerful story of how Arnolphe’s exploitative impulses are foiled by a combination of young love,and benign coincidence.

What’s striking about Lochhead’s Scots-accented version is the energy and invention with which it updates the language of this story, while leaving it in a roughly 17th-century setting. Tony Cownie’s production, with design by Hayden Griffin, boasts the kind of witty old-Edinburgh set that delights audiences, while demolishing Arnolphe’s sexual attitudes in language that brings to bear the whole wisdom – both male and female – of the gender wars of the last forty years.

The anachronism is more superficial than real, though, since the mood of the language precisely matches the tone and meaning of Moliere’s text. And it’s a measure of the quality of Tony Cownie’s brilliantly-cast production – and of a superb central performance from Peter Forbes, until now best known for creating the great role of the officer in Black Watch – that it both honours the basic shape of this classic comedy, and recognises the complexity of the characters involved. It recognises Agnes not just as an ingenue, but as a formidable woman in the making. And at the deepest level, it acknowledges that Arnolphe is not just a lascivious old fool, but – like all of us, eventually – a lover grown too old to attract the one he desires; and also a father of sorts, uttering that primal roar of rage that the lovely girl on whom he has lavished so much care and treasure will finally belong not to him, but to another man entirely.

Des Dillon’s Six Black Candles – first seen at the Lyceum in 2004 – is another show with a strong distaff twist, featuring a cast of eight women and one man, and a fierce female perspective on exactly how a woman should react, when her husband runs off with the teenage babysitter. Set somewhere in Catholic Lanarkshire, in the kind of extreme and surreal post-working-class environment reflected in television shows like Shameless, Six Black Candles tells the story of a rough evening at the flat of distraught Caroline, who has summoned her five sisters, her mother and her old gran – dotty, but not daft – to perform a piece of serious black magic on the waxen head of her hated love-rival, young Stacie Gracie.

Dillon’s text is full of hilarious one-liners and bold black comedy, and John Binnie’s production – for Dillon’s new touring company Goldfish Theatre – assembles a stellar cast, including Kay Gallie, Beth Marshall, Wendy Seager and Carmen Pieraccini. For the moment, though, the cast seem slightly out of rhythm with the play, rushing at the text rather than relaxing into the language; and it seems likely that this will mature into a richer and funnier production, as it tours around Scotland, over the next five weeks.

The two women who appear in Helen Kluger’s The Dacha – this week’s Play, Pie and Pint show at Oran Mor – have probably never heard of feminism, and would despise it if they had; but still, their story offers a memorable female perspective on life in the lower depths of post-Soviet Russia. Madam Irina is an old and ailing former dance teacher with the great ballet companies of Soviet Russia; her housekeeper Louba is an urban peasant, unable to read or write, but well up to most of the tricks necessary to keep the small, shabby household ticking over, in an age of rising prices, and tiny or non-existent state pensions.

Their relationship – a constant sparring-match sustained by unspoken mutual affection and dependence – is a familiar dramatic cliche, more literary than theatrical. It uses this familiar set-up, though, to expose new strands of pain and loss in Russian life, as Louba faces the terrible fate of a soldier son serving in Chechnya, and Madam Irina is reduced to selling her Order of Lenin medal to pay the rent. And Philip Howard’s production boasts two stunning performances from Colette O’Neil as Madam and Anne Lacey as Louba; so deep, poetic, and beautifully-pitched that they sometimes come close to transforming this predictable play into a real masterpiece.

Educating Agnes at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 7 May. Six Black Candles at Cottiers Theatre, Glasgow, until tonight, and on tour across Scotland until 22 May, including dates in Inverness, Perth, Dundee, and Stirling. The Dacha at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday.

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Falling/Flying

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on FALLING/FLYING at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 9.4.11
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3 stars ***

IT’S FAIR TO say that expectations are high, around this small but vivid show in the Tron’s Changing House studio. The writer, Stef Smith, was the woman behind the text for last year’s mighty Edinburgh Fringe hit, Roadkill; and the director, Ros Philips, has just completed a hugely successful run as a trainee at the Citizens’. This latest work, a 50-minute theatrical poem called Falling/Flying, goes boldly to the heart of transgender experience, using two voices – one male but also female, the other female but also male – to explore something like the life-story of a young transsexual who lives life briefly but to the full – with pain, with fear, but also with moments of contentment and ecstasy – and then dies young, from a cancer appaently related to the many drugs he has taken, in the quest for a female form.

In a sense, Falling/Flying seems like a script in development, rather than a fully-fledged piece of theatre; it bulges with ideas and approaches to the subject – political, observational, mystical, erotic, tragic – without ever finding a structure that gives a clear view of these all these gems of perception and poetry, and ends up sounding a shade repetitive.

Philips’s production, though, features a stunning central performance from Gordon Brandie as the female voice, with strong support from John Paul Murray; as well as a beautiful green/white hospital-room design by Kai Fischer, exquisite lighting by Malcolm Rogan, and powerful sound by Barry McColl. There are shades of Angels In America here, as well as of the documentary film Paris Is Burning, which is widely referenced in the text. But Falling/Flying also brings a new sensibility to the subject, rooted in the streets and bars of Glasgow; and I hope this rich theatrical experiment will have a continuing life, if only because its potential seems almost boundless.

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