Tim Barrow didn't know
much about the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England before
he decided to write a play about it. The Roslin born actor and writer
was living in London, where he was in the throes of producing his
low-budget road movie, The Inheritance, when he started to wonder how
England and Scotland had come to be part of something called Great
Britain. When he started to look into events leading up to the Act
which may or may nor be done away with following the forthcoming
independence referendum, Barrow was amazed at what he found.
“It was so dramatic,”
he declares. “It was way more fascinating and complex than I would
have thought. There were all these amazing characters and corruption
and intrigue in this fast-moving political sphere where all these
figures had suddenly come to prominence before falling. You had
people like Queen Anne, who was this ageing woman who didn't have an
heir, despite having about seventeen pregnancies. You had Daniel
Defoe, who at the time was working in Edinburgh as a spy for the
English government before he really came to prominence as a novelist.
“Then you had Allan
Ramsay, who was this incredible Scottish poet and literary
entrepreneur, who was setting up magazines and collecting people
together. You read his poetry now, and he's a major figure. He has
all this incredible lyricism and zest in the same way Burns or Hugh
MacDiarmid have, and even though he comes from a working class
background rather than having had a classical education, he seems to
be able to marry the classical world with contemporary life really
well.”
The result of Barrow's
findings is Union, a brand new historical romp through the events
behind the Act of Union, which opens at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in
Edinburgh this week. The play's timing may look opportunistic, but
Barrow actually completed the first draft of Union back in 2008, and
only showed it to the Royal Lyceum's artistic director Mark Thomson
when he was in Edinburgh to promote his second film, The Space
Between, a couple of years later.
At that time, a
minority SNP government was in office in Holyrood, and any kind of
referendum on independence looked like a remote prospect. A performed
reading of Union was held at the end of 2011, with the play
subsequently programmed. By that time, the Scottish parliament
election held earlier in the year had given the SNP an overall
majority, and a referendum was suddenly looking like a very real
possibility.
“The play suddenly
started looking very topical,” was how Barrow saw it, although “I
thought that if any major theatre in Scotland was going to do
something like this, they probably weren't going to invest in a brand
new play by me, but would go for something by something by someone
who's better known.”
As it turns out thus
far at least, Union is one of few plays that are in any way pertinent
to the referendum to be produced this year. Indeed, history-based
state of the nation epics that speak to contemporary audiences have
been few and far between in Scotland. While in England, the post 1968
generation of playwrights such as Howard Brenton, Howard Barker,
David Edgar and David Hare have all in different ways reimagined real
events, in Scotland writers have arguably done things differently.
In the 1980s, Liz
Lochhead's Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off took a
lyrical approach to the relationship between Elizabeth 1 and Mary
Stuart, while Jo Clifford's early plays, Losing Venice and Lucy's
Play, used historical back-drops to make serious points. The nearest
equivalent to Barker's Victory, Edgar's Maydays, Brenton's The Romans
in Britain or Hare's Plenty came in 1999 with David Greig's look at
Scots pioneer of paper money John Law in The Speculator.
Alistair Beaton's
Anthony Neilson directed Caledonia, a satirical look at the doomed
Darien expedition, was less successful in its execution, though it
was still possible to recognise its roots in John McGrath's The
Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black, Black Oil. Such irreverent but
politically charged looks at Scotland's nation state arguably date
back to Sir David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites, while
Rona Munro's forthcoming trilogy of plays for this year's Edinburgh
International Festival, The James Plays, are likely to take a more
serious approach.
“I love Howard
Barker,” Barrow says. “To set his plays in a historical context,
but to have contemporary ideas and to use contemporary language, and
to say a great deal about politics is amazing. I remember seeing
Barker's play, Victory, at the Lyceum, which had a massive effect on
me. It made me see that something like that was possible, something
that said tons about the world I live in, even though it was set in
the past.
“I really admire all
these writers that came through in the 1960s and 1970s, and who could
have thirty actors or something onstage. These brilliant dramatists
seem to find these moments of upheaval, revolution and new ideas
coming forth, and I guess in our age there's so much seeming freedom
of information and ideas that we're used to the fact that anything is
possible. So it's good to be reminded of certain historical
situations where people are realising for the first time that they
can live in a completely different way.”
While Union isn't
anything as simplistic as a pro-independence polemic, it's clear
where Barrow's sympathies lie. Yet, rather than create something
dryly educational, Barrow cites Monty Python as an influence as much
as Barker.
“So much of what
happened is seemingly absurd,” Barrow says. “So the play's not
cynical, and it's certainly not any kind of biting satire. We're very
much trying to celebrate the life, the times and the spirit of the
age, and also the political arguments of the time. It's not about
saying one argument's right and one's wrong. It's more complex than
that. So many of the arguments for union as well as those against
were absolutely sound for the time. It's only later that you discover
that various people received money for voting a certain way and
betrayed the people they were with. That's where it gets really
difficult.”
Union, Royal Lyceum
Theatre, Edinburgh, March 20-April 12
ends
Tim Barrow was born in
Roslin to English parents, who moved to Australia, before returning
to Scotland when Barrow was aged six.
Barrow trained as an
actor at Drama Centre in London, and, on returning to Scotland,
appeared in Taggart and Richard Jobson's film, New Town Killers, as
well as in his own films, The Inheritance and The Space Between.
While living in London
between 2005 and 2011, Barrow co-founded Shotgun Theatre Company, a
collective-run venture set up to produce challenging new plays.
Barrow wrote and
produced The Inheritance, which won the Raindance award at the 2007
British Independent Film Awards, and was nominated for Best UK
feature film at Raindance.
Barrow was also
nominated for best producer at the 2008 BAFTA Scotland New Talent
Awards.
Barrow went on to found
Lyre Productions, which produced his second feature film, The Space
Between, which was released in 2011, marking his debit as a director
as well as writer and producer.
Union is Barrow's
biggest stage work to date.
The Herald, March 18th 2014
ends
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