REVIEW: The National Theatre of Scotland: The James Plays
Eden Court
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by Margaret Chrystall
AS the last lines of James III faded away, that play – and all three of Rona Munro’s James Plays – fused together in the imagination to create something very like "the big dream" the playwright declares in the published scripts that it had always been her hope to write.
Over four nights at Eden Court last week, audiences were caught up in the soap opera of the 15th century Stewart kings’ lives – and a broad sweep of history that, in the past, may always have seemed an indistinct blur for many Scots.
First created at a time when Scots were dreaming and planning for the new future the Referendum offered, the plays arrived in Inverness last week when the next stage of that journey – next month’s election – is very much in people’s minds.
In the reimaginings of a time long ago and not so far away, Rona Munro brought her Stewarts – with their messy love lives and often hopeless political situations – right into the faces of her contemporary audience. Never mind the heads and hearts.
Kingdoms, battles, greed, social upheaval, lust and speeches – as well as love, rose gardens, ambition, poetry and hope for better are all layered into the basic stories of three generations of one family.
And as the lights came up and later went down on each of the three night’s plays, part of the luxury of that dramatic experience was joining the dots as you went, thanks to the playwright’s cunningly woven themes, echoes, parallels and shallow-planted time-bombs.
Sudden realisations revealed themselves like Cluedo clues.
"You should always tell folk what your eyes see," says Privy Councillor John to rebellious, arts-loving James III’s Queen Margaret near the end of the third play.
It’s a seed phrase he planted earlier in her mind as she was just beginning to see a future for them together. And we know that’s what she’s thinking because it’s a wisdom she adopts and peddles as her own idea to her Aunt Annabella and court woman Phemy: "People should say what their eyes see, it’s important."
Seeing the truth was something the James Plays’ audiences were constantly invited to do in these productions – sometimes with large-scale pointers from director Laurie Sansom – as when the giant sword dominating the stage throughout bleeds in James I or when it blasts flames in James II.
The third play’s subtitle The True Mirror refers to the Venetian mirror James III gifts to his wife Margaret, hoping that seeing how cruel aging is will bring her the same pain it does him.
But Margaret likes what she sees in her reflection: "I like her. she’s not frightened of anything."
Privy councillor John criticises James to his wife: "He has you and Scotland and he doesn’t value either!"
But even unfaithful and superficial, James III is loved by Malin Crepin’s dignified and wise Margaret, shown, like all Rona Munro’s royal women, to be strong, clever, sophisticated and as realistically complicated as any of her kings.
All three James kings were ambitiously brought to life by their actors – Steven Miller, Andrew Rothney and Matthew Pidgeon – in towering performances. Equally vulnerable, all trapped by their royalty, all three were made growing men forged painfully by the craft of kingship.
And the director and his evenly-matched cast of talents ensured that the graft of earning the glittering prize was as visceral and powerful as all the individual stories that constantly reminded you historic figures are fallible laughing, crying human beings too.
The staging – from lighting to ambitious, well-used set to sound design and music which included the knowingly amusing 15th century version of Pharrell’s Happy – only enhanced the unfolding drama.
Blythe Duff as part-Cassandra figure, part Lady Macbeth, dominated all three parts of the trilogy – in the third, swapping Isabella Stewart for the role of James III’s aunt, Annabella.
As the action closes, she literally has to build a king from the naked young James IV-to-be, clothing over his guilt for the death of his father in the story-soaked family jewels fit for a coronation.
As in each of the three plays, hers are the last words: "You’re Scotland today..."
"Just be one man and do your best. Scotland will do what Scotland does. Love that. Trust that... and remember who you are."
If you were privileged enough to be part of the Plays’ audience, you won’t forget.
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