SOME eight years have passed since Rona Munro’s “James Plays” (a trilogy set during the reigns of the kings James I, II and III of Scotland) played the Edinburgh International Festival to considerable – but not universal – critical acclaim. One over-excited critic even wondered if the dramas surpassed the history plays of Shakespeare?
I did not, I confess, share his enthusiasm. Reviewing the trilogy for this newspaper’s predecessor the Sunday Herald, I suggested it might be “the biggest missed opportunity in the history of Scottish theatre.”
Despite their grand historical subject matter, the plays were, I thought, lacking in real drama. The same is true of James IV: Queen Of The Fight, the fourth part of a series that is heading inexorably towards a play about that pivotal monarch in British history, James VI of Scotland and I of England.
In imagining the characters of Anne and Ellen – high-born Moorish women from Spain who end up in James IV’s court following an act of Scottish piracy on the high seas – Munro has chosen a fascinating subject (and one rooted in real events). There were people of African descent in the Holyrood court in the early 16th-century, and their presence marks an important moment in the too long neglected history of Black people in Scotland.
Unfortunately, however, Munro’s stories of Anne (who is taken into the service of James’s teenage, English queen, Margaret Tudor) and Ellen (who is housed in the quarters given over to the many entertainers in the Edinburgh court) are forced to compete with a series of other, under-developed plotlines.
Whether it is the Queen’s dangerous petulance or James’s desire to impress the powers of Europe with his gladiatorial and artistic games, no narrative comes to the fore and none is truly compelling.
Keith Fleming is the standout in a strong cast, bringing laugh-out-loud humour and a genuinely sinister undertow to James’s makar William Dunbar. Daniel Cahill’s James is believably fragile in his demonstrations of masculinity.
Laura Lovemore (Anne) and Danielle Jam (Ellen) successfully embody their characters’ resilience as exoticised and vulnerable outsiders. Blythe Duff is typically superb as the thrawn Dame
Phemy, keeper of the Queen’s household, and the ultimate master of court politics.
Designer Jon Bausor has created a handsome, appropriately martial war theatre for the sword-wielding fight scenes that stand-in for drama. However, despite the various strengths of director Laurie Sansom’s production (for Raw Material and Capital Theatres, in association with the National Theatre of Scotland), the piece fails to cohere into a really convincing history play.
By contrast, Ben Lewis’s deliciously titled Don Quixote: Man Of Clackmannanshire – a modern adaptation of the magnum opus of the Spanish bard de Cervantes – succeeds both in conveying the brilliance of the original text and speaking meaningfully (and movingly) to our times. Directed by Lu Kemp in a co-production for Dundee Rep and Perth Theatre, the piece casts the astoundingly excellent Benny Young in the lead role of Donald Quentin, a latter-day Scottish Don Quixote.
Depressed equally by the abundantly evident decay of the society around him and his own sense of under-achievement, the pensioner (who has a collection of medieval memorabilia) dons a suit of armour and skewers his TV set with his trusty lance. He is, he declares, ready to redeem modern Scotland by committing acts of heroism in the towns and countryside of Clackmannanshire (even if the use of a Perth and Kinross dialling code late in the show creates a continuity problem).
In Act One, Young’s Don Q (who combines comedy and pathos in brilliantly equal measure) sets off astride his mobility scooter in search of chivalrous adventure. He is joined (on a wee girl’s bike) by his “squire”, aka his garrulous great-nephew Sandy (a modern-day Sancho Panza, played by the impressively funny Sean Connor), who tells his boss at ASDA that he’s going off to carry out great deeds “for God and velour”.
Don’s insistence that he has never bought a scratchcard because “scratchcards are for women” is typical of the play’s fabulous line in comedy.
In the second half, Don has to reckon with his nemesis: not the terrifying giants of the local windfarm, but his social care needs assessment (and its implied threat of his internment in a care home). Lewis renders all of this with wonderful wit and insightful social conscience (not to say a brilliant dramatic shift involving a social worker, played with undeniable emotional force by Irene Macdougall).
Nicole Sawyerr (Don’s over-stretched care provider) and Emily Winter (his exasperated niece) offer fine support on designer Karen Tennent’s utilitarian set, in what is a memorably imaginative tilt at Cervantes’s great classic.
James IV tours until November 12: rawmaterialarts.com
Don Quixote plays Dundee Rep until October 15: dundeerep.co.uk; and Perth Theatre, October 25 to November 5: horsecross.co.uk
