SCOTTISH theatre has weathered the storm of the Covid-19 pandemic with remarkable fortitude. The list of really exceptional shows that have been staged in Scotland as we have emerged from the public health crisis is encouraging, not only in the quantity of outstanding productions, but also in the number and the geographical range of the companies that have produced them.
There have been superb shows from the Hebrides (Every Brilliant Thing, by Mull Theatre) to Perth (I Am Tiger, by Perth Theatre and Imaginate) and the cities of the central belt (such as Life is a Dream, by the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh and Medea, by Bard in the Botanics, Glasgow).
As one would expect in such a national comeback, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) has played its part in the recovery. Our national drama company’s staging of Liz Lochhead’s (below) much-loved adaptation of Euripides’s Medea at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival (not to be confused with Bard in the Botanics’ very different, but equally brilliant, production of Kathy McKean’s new version earlier in the summer) is among the cream of Scottish theatre’s excellent post-Covid crop. So, too, is May Sumbwanyambe’s extraordinary Enough of Him (a co-production between the NTS and Pitlochry Festival Theatre).
Which is not to say that the NTS has led Scottish theatre out of the pandemic, like Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The quality of the company’s work – which has included the deeply disappointing Burn (a wincingly embarrassing, much-trailed dance-theatre piece about Robert Burns performed by Alan Cumming) – has been too variable for that.
Whilst the NTS’s part in Scottish theatre’s impressive recovery from the Covid crisis is laudable, the company’s recent programming might be said to have lacked consistency and identity. Which brings us, neatly, to the NTS’s 2023 programme, which was announced with great fanfare on Thursday.
The work on offer – which ranges from an homage to the great Billy Connolly to a piece about Scottish Backhold Wrestling and a revival of Eilidh Loan’s Moorcroft (a play about working class, Scottish male experience and football) – puts a strong emphasis on popular culture. There’s popular literature, too, with new adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
When I catch up with the NTS’s artistic director Jackie Wylie following the season launch, she tells me that there are “two things” at the heart of the 2023 programme. The first, she explains, is attracting wider audiences.
“Kidnapped, Moorcroft and Dracula – even though it’s a dark story – are about asking, ‘what’s going to get audiences out?,’” she says. Wylie wants to entice an ever more diverse cross-section of the Scottish population to discover “that very special, particular joy of being in a communal, live experience”.
However, in addition to programming work (such as Dracula) that has instant popular recognition and Moorcroft (which is tried and tested), the director insists that she is not dropping work that challenges audiences.
She gives as an example the recent hit show Enough of Him (which is not on the 2023 programme, but is under consideration for an NTS revival).
The piece is a powerful drama about the experience of slavery in Jamaica and its impact in late-18th century Scotland. “The reason Enough of Him got standing ovations was that people went through an experience together that can only happen in the theatre,” says Wylie.
There may also be a challenge to audiences in Nat McCleary’s Thrown. Although rooted in the folk sport of Scottish Backhold Wrestling, the play (which will be staged at next year’s Edinburgh International Festival) will raise all manner of questions regarding Scottishness and how we understand and construct Scottish identity.
Protest – a new play about youth and political activism by the excellent writer Hannah Lavery – offers a challenge of a different sort.
If the idea of “popular” theatre can embrace challenging themes, it must also encompass Scotland’s iconic figures. And there are few more iconic than Billy Connolly.
“The National Theatre of Scotland making a piece of work about Billy Connolly was something that almost had to happen,” Wylie comments. Dear Billy – in which writer and performer Gary McNair brings to the stage the many voices of Scottish people expressing their admiration of, and affection for, the great comedian and actor – is, potentially, the quintessence of Scottish popular theatre.
“There’s this chicken and egg thing,” Wylie observes. “Did Billy Connolly make the west of Scotland’s personality or vice versa? When you start to look at his physicality, his relationship to drink in his early life, you go, ‘oh my god! How did one person create the DNA of a nation?’”
Wylie believes that “the National Theatre of Scotland exists for the Scottish people to see themselves on stage”. Dear Billy – which she describes as a “cumulative love letter” from the Scottish people to one of their most beloved sons – is intended to be the epitome of that.
So, too, is Moorcroft, which is a story of social solidarity, terrible loss and unbreakable affection within a group of working-class, Scottish men who come together in an amateur football club. “The audience for that show was working-class people from Scotland seeing themselves on stage,” says the NTS director. When she saw the show at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, the playhouse was, she remembers, “stowed out”. People were, she adds, “recognising themselves and having a good night out, but also going through the absolute agony of that story”.
Wylie is emphatic that the Moorcroft that will be going on tour is, “absolutely the Tron’s production”. The purpose of the NTS coming in as co-producer is simply to take the play out of Glasgow to a wider audience. “That,”she says, “feels like a really important thing for the NTS to do.”
For Wylie, “the word ‘popular’ can mean lots of different things”. As true as that is, it’s clear that the aim of engaging a wider, popular audience for theatre gives the 2023 NTS programme a distinct identity.
For further information on the 2023 NTS programme, visit: nationaltheatrescotland.com
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