Anyone with half an eye on today’s global politics will know bad things happen when religious zealots come face to face. The same is true in our own history, as Rona Munro reminds us in the latest instalment of her James Play saga about Scotland’s Stewart kings.
Compared with the ambitious blockbusters with which she began the series 10 years ago, this episode feels more like a slight if diverting extension of the James Play universe. We have reached 1528 and, reacting to the early stirrings of the Scottish reformation, the Roman Catholic church is treating any opposition as heresy. The first to be burned at the stake is Patrick Hamilton (Benjamin Osugo) in punishment for his Lutheran preaching against the priesthood.
Meanwhile, the infant king James V is reaching maturity, if maturity is what you can call the brattish mix of brains and brutality that characterises him here. Played by a pugnacious Sean Connor, he is a manchild indulged enough to expect obedience, but intelligent enough to realise actions have consequences. His volatility is scary.
Certainly, he is the closest Catriona Faint comes to a match in her role as Katherine Hamilton, sister of the martyred Patrick and a distant cousin of the king. The heart of Munro’s play, she is a pragmatist who cannot fail to be impressed by her brother’s resolve. When suspicion turns on her, she refuses to commit to the church, less out of conviction than a belief in freedom of thought.
Played by Faint with wit and attack, Katherine is a slippery opponent in the ecclesiastical court; certainly more troublesome than Osugo’s Patrick, who is described as a “stubborn, arrogant arse” but comes across as merely dreamy. Directed by Orla O’Loughlin on Becky Minto’s candle-strewn set, the play sets up a fundamentalist battle between an intolerant church and a young woman with a rather modern sense of independence.
It would end as badly as any of today’s conflicts were it not offset by the romance between Katherine and her childhood friend Jenny. Played with plain-speaking honesty by Alyth Ross, she provides Katherine with an escape route to a happy ending that suggests, in case it needs pointing out, that compassion is a better bet than fanaticism.
• At Festival theatre studio, Edinburgh until 20 April, then touring
