I was pleasantly surprised by the
reviews of Rona Munro’s
The James
Plays on their transfer to the National Theatre. Opening
as they did mere days after the referendum on Scottish independence
yielded a 55% majority in favour of continuing within the United
Kingdom, I feared that the plays would have the bejaysus patronised out
of them by a complacent-triumphalist Sassenach contingent. My
fears grew as I watched them in one of the National’s all-day sessions
(having missed them in Edinburgh, indeed having missed Edinburgh).
It seemed to me that at crucial moments Munro was consciously writing,
not rallying cries for the Yes cause in that referendum, but with an
awareness of truly renascent Scottish national identity, whether within
the United Kingdom or outside it. I feared it would be all too
easy to trample blithely on that voice and that consciousness, and I
feared that – at a time when numerous parties in the former Yes camp
seemed to be behaving on the basis not simply that the struggle for
Scottish independence continues, but that it continues as if nothing
had happened – that kind of attitude from London’s cultural as well as
its political contingent would not help matters north of the border
progress in any constructive direction.
Diplomatic
In the event, whilst a note of gloating and/or condescension is not
entirely absent (you can set your watch by Quentin Letts, and set it to
the 1950s), the predominant note is a much more participatory kind of
enthusiasm. Dominic Cavendish, who I thought struck an awkward
stance a few weeks ago in his review of
Rudy’s Rare Records in Birmingham
by wondering why Scots would want to secede from this kind of embracing
national spirit, here leads the cheers by daring even to use the words
“Better than Shakespeare”, albeit followed by a diplomatic question
mark. (I was inevitably reminded of the legendary cry of
enthusiasm at the Edinburgh première of John Home’s
The Douglas in 1756: “Whaur’s yer
Wullie Shakespeare noo?”)
Michael Arditti takes another tack by noting that Munro has become only
the fourth playwright to be staged in trilogy form at the Olivier,
although he’s mistaken, overlooking for instance David Hare’s trilogy
in the 1990s; he might equally have observed that the number of living
women to have had a full-length work presented on that stage is just as
tiny.
Vapid
As I write, the more vapid sections of the cultural Internet are alive
with shock at the change in Renée Zellweger’s looks, together with
outrage that people should feel able to express opinion on the subject
so casually. The fundamental point is valid, and is pre-echoed by
Susannah Clapp in her review of Kristin Scott Thomas in
Electra: “Only a very sexist
culture could be amazed at the fact that she is willing to rough up her
hair for a part.” I was one of the amazed, not simply that Scott
Thomas looked un-Scott Thomassy, but that on her first entrance, if I
hadn’t already known, I could have believed that it was Kathryn Hunter
on the Old Vic stage: somehow she contrived to make herself seem
several inches shorter as well as everything else.
Written for Theatre Record.