ONE by one, Scotland’s theatre companies make their Covid-era returns to the stage. The latest to do so is Edinburgh’s great repertory company the Royal Lyceum.
They were staging a feminised Brecht (Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti) when the first lockdown was announced in March of last year. The company reappears on the Lyceum stage with a project that is, arguably, even more ambitious.
Life Is a Dream, the 1635 play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, is considered one of the greatest dramas of the “Golden Age” of Spanish literature. First staged some 30 years after the publication of the Part One of Cervantes’s titanic novel Don Quixote, Calderón’s drama tells the story of the ill-fated Segismundo, a Polish prince who has been locked up in a jail tower in the forest since he was a young child.
Discovered by chance by the Muscovite noblewoman Rosaura and her servant Clarin, Segismundo unfurls his autobiography. His only crime, he tells them, was to have been born.
His superstitious mother (the monarch Basilio, feminised in this production and played by the ever-superb Alison Peebles) was terrified by a horoscope that prophesied that her son would become a violent and ruinous dictator. Unable to kill her child, Basilio opted instead to imprison him under the less-than-tender care of the loyal courtier Clotaldo.
The drama that ensues is a structurally complex one, with numerous subplots. However, at its heart are philosophical considerations of fate, human nature and nurture, the meaning of reality, and the basis of morality.
Peebles’s queen decides, as an experiment, to release her son from prison and place him on the throne. If he proves to be a wise and benevolent ruler, the prophecy will have been proven false.
If, however, he behaves as a brutal despot, Segismundo will be returned to his prison and told that his period at liberty was all a dream.
A new, vast stage was placed above the Lyceum’s stalls seating for an Edinburgh International Festival production in August. Director Wils Wilson has opted to keep this performance space for her staging of Calderon’s classic.
Played in-the-round, with some audience members seated to the back and on the sides of the stage, the piece takes on an intimate and dynamic character. The temporary stage employed here is considerably bigger than the Lyceum’s regular performance area, and Wilson makes full use of it.
As the brilliant Lorn Macdonald’s Segismundo is unchained, his pent-up frustration and anger explode across the stage. Having never been properly socialised, the prince grunts and growls like a wounded boar as he, inevitably, appears to fulfil the prophecy of his innate evil.
The political chaos unleashed by Basilio’s experiment is intercut with developing subplots involving the Muscovite gentry in Poland (Rosaura, disguised as the male Astraea, seeks revenge on her ex-lover, Astolpho; Clotaldo rediscovers the daughter he left back in Muscovy). High-octane performances combine with atmospheric sound and music (courtesy of Davey Anderson) and clever, flexible design (by Georgia McGuinness, Alex Berry and Kai Fischer) to create a compelling two hours of theatre.
If Macdonald gives a powerful, thought-provoking performance as Segismundo, Peebles is equally excellent as the self-regarding, discomfited monarch Basilio. Anna Russell-Martin – who gives a bravura performance as a Scottish, proletarian Rosaura – also shines amidst a fine cast.
Calderón’s play is not an easy one to stage, and, at times, the necessity for narrative explication disturbs the pace of Wilson’s production. That is small beer, however, given the many virtues of this impressive production.
Until November 20. For further details, visit: lyceum.org.uk
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