Gladstone’s
Land, Edinburgh
Three
stars
Some
countries have all the luck. This is something made abundantly clear in this
second theatrical excursion by the National Trust for Scotland, which,
following on from Enlightenment House in Charlotte Square, moves into another of
the capital’s most historically charged but largely unsung buildings. Originally
built in 1550 in the Lawnmarket, the six-storey tenement was redeveloped in the
seventeenth century to become home for a variety of tenants from across the
social classes.
In the
hands of writer/director Ben Harrison, best known in these parts for his work
with site-specific specialists Grid Iron, here working alongside co-director Allie
Winton Butler, such a rich source becomes a series of thumbnail sketches of crucial
moments in Scottish history. As the audience move from room to room in what
feels like an Old Town approximation of the Chelsea Hotel, the twist here is
that any one of three different stories can be presented in each scene depending
on which way the fates have it.
Vehicles
for this include the assorted tankards proffered by Mary Gapinski’s landlady
Lucky Lucy, to the very English brands of tea served up by novelist and spy
Daniel Defoe, brought to flamboyant life by Kevin Lennon. There is also the
genteel optimism of Mark Kydd’s Somerville, who invests blind faith and a
considerable sum besides in the doomed Darien expedition. Best of all is Wendy
Seager’s bed-bound and sickly embodiment of Caledonia itself. These bite-size
scenes are interspersed with the presence of Deith, embodied by the operatic
brooding of composer David Paul Jones, who invokes all manner of plague on the
house’s occupants.
This is all
entertainingly enlightening enough over the show’s forty-five-minute duration,
with each stand-alone scene timed to allow audiences to be staggered across the
afternoon and the show itself on a kind of live loop without any dramatic full-stop.
Given the current state of flux in terms of Scotland’s fortunes, such open-endedness
is a pointer towards the future, making history as it goes.
The Herald, July 19th 2019
enda
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