Rob
Drummond was at home in England when he looked at the news feed on his phone,
and saw a post about the fire at Glasgow School of Art. It was June 2018, and
the writer and performer behind such hits as Grain in the Blood, Bullet Catch
and Our Fathers initially presumed the post was to mark the fourth anniversary
of the 2014 blaze in GSA’s Mackintosh Building, which was undergoing a major
restoration after much of it was destroyed.
As it
turned out, the news was far worse, as reports of a second fire were beamed
across the world. As someone who had taken Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic
construction for granted while living in Glasgow, Drummond was as stunned as anyone
else with even a passing relationship with the Mack.
While
emotions continue to run high in response to the disaster, Drummond channelled
his thoughts on all this into what he does best. The result is The Mack, a new
play that forms part of Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre
season in Glasgow prior to a week-long run at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
Over the
play’s hour-long duration, Drummond brings to life Mackintosh himself alongside
a fireman who fought the inferno and an expert who had been working on the
building’s restoration. This is done through a series of criss-crossing
monologues that gets to the heart of why The Mack matters so much beyond mere bricks
and mortar.
“The
Mack is kind of one of those buildings that, even if you don’t know much about
it, you know how highly it’s revered,” Drummond reflects. “In Glasgow, there’s
a very working class sense of pride in the culture that exists around people.
The Mack isn’t just a building. It’s more than that.”
While
Drummond has no personal ties to the Mack, its presence in the city he used to
live has left its mark.
“The main
thing I feel is of a lost opportunity,” he says. “Here was a building that was
on my doorstep, and I never visited it. I almost feel guilty about not knowing
much about Mackintosh, but I don’t think I’m alone. He’s revered now, but at
the time he was alive he wasn’t so highly regarded. When The Mack was built it
was considered weird, and even today a lot of people don’t know a thing about
the person who made it.”
Drummond
researched into Mackintosh’s life, and in particular in relation to his wife,
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, through a series of letters he wrote to her. The
pair had met at Glasgow School of Art, and were intense collaborators.
“As soon
as I found the letters I had my play,” says Drummond, who also spoke to Robyn
Calvert, a key member of GSA’s restoration team. Drummond
also spoke to a fireman who had been on the frontline during the tragic blaze
at Grenfell Tower in London.
“Talking
to him added so much to the play,” says Drummond. “I asked him why he became a
fireman, and he said it was because he wasn’t talented enough to become a rock
star or a footballer.”
While
there is a strong element of verbatim-based theatre in Drummond’s play, which
draws strongly from interviews as much as Mackintosh’s letters, he is steering
clear of any resultant controversies aired following the second fire.
“I don’t
think it’s my place to start pointing the finger,” he says. “It’s just a bit
too messy. I don’t want to wade in when we’re still finding out about things. I’d
rather concentrate on the human story.”
Drummond
uses a rarely used word to describe the less cautious responses of some.
“Ultracrepidarianism,”
he says of a term firs recorded as being used in 1819 by essayist William
Hazlitt. “It means talking with authority about something you know nothing
about. There’s one paragraph in the play which addresses the fact that I’m not
talking about it, when the expert goes off on a rant about leaving people to
get on with the report and waiting to see what it says.”
In terms
of what should happen next with what is left of Mackintosh’s construction,
Drummond is torn.
“There
are two competing things going on,” he says. “Yes, I think they are going to
rebuild The Mack, and I would be very surprised if they didn’t, but it’s how
they do it that matters. They could rebuild it exactly how it was, which was so
beautiful, and was Mackintosh’s only monumental building, but it would be a
copy, so it wouldn’t be the same. Or they could do what Mackintosh would do,
which is to do something daring, different and new alongside the original
design, but I honestly don’t know which one should happen.”
Either
way, Drummond’s play sounds more like a meditation on the life that has flowed
through the building as much as a taking stock of what happened with a view to
what should happen next.
“It’s not
a dry biography of Mackintosh,” he says, “and it’s not a case study of the
fire. Nor is it a stuffy play about art, but it is a play about big things. It’s
about how we value art, and it’s about how we relate to each other. Whenever we
have to make cuts, art is always the top of the list of where those cuts have
to be made.”
Drummond
points to a quote by Winston Churchill, who in 1938 said that ‘The arts are
essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain
and encourage them…Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the
reverence and delight which are their due’.
“That
could apply to many things today,” says Drummond, “but right now it feels realty
pertinent to The Mack.”
The
Mack, Oran Mor, Glasgow, April 15-20; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, April 23-27.
www.oran-mor.co.uk
www.traverse.co.uk
www.playpiepint.com
The Herald, April 11th 2019
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