Sunset Song Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh 29th May 2024 Review
Sunset Song is at the Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh until Saturday 08 June and if, like many people, the 1932 novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon on which this stage drama is based is one of your favourites, be prepared for what is described as a “radically reimagined production”.
Whenever you set out to “reimagine” a classic and much loved work you are inevitably going to be caught between a rock and a hard place as some people will love a new approach and a new perspective being taken and others will brook no variance from the original source material. The question then always is, has the new work, for good or bad, been accepted and judged on its own merits.
In this new production, writer Morna Young and co-conceiver of this project Finn den Hertog, who is also the director, have faced more than a few challenges, not least how to compress the long time line of the original work and its delicately interwoven story into the time allowed for a stage production. Also how to deal a story that potentially required many set changes must have been a challenge to everyone involved.
How to deal with some of these challenges has neatly been sidestepped by simply not dealing with them at all and removing all stage sets except one fixed element, the very earth and the rugged landscape itself on which so much of this story takes place, and the power that it has over everyone, including of course Chris (Danielle Jam). With an earth-filled stage and a landscape backdrop by set and costume designer Emma Bailey, the stark simplicity of this design allows the most important part of Sunset Song, its narrative, to be performed and delivered with no distractions.
This is a work that requires most of the cast to perform not only multiple roles, but also to provide the music (by Finn Anderson) which so often not only becomes a soundscape but an integral part of the story. To add to this, many of the female performers take on male roles too and the most obvious of those is Naomi Stirrat who plays Chris’s brother Will.
The roles of Chris’s parents, John and Jean are performed by Ali Craig and Rori Hawthorn. Both are impressive here and Ali gives us an at times frightening portrayal of a God-fearing, Bible quoting man all too easily prone to domestic violence to both his wife and children. There is an inner strength to Rori’s portrayal of Jean, but also a fragility here that we see crumbling in front of us as this woman can no longer cope with the dwindling options in her life amidst this harsh landscape.
Trapped between the hopes of her father and the dreams of her mother, Chris is caught it seems between both worlds, and Danielle Jam treads that fine line between two personalities well here, particularly when she meets the man of her life Ewan (Murray Fraser) who all too soon shatters her dreams.
For the most part the female to male role switch makes no difference here but, for me, that moment of sheer physical confrontation when Will eventually stands up to his father is now missing.
This Sunset Song is a bold work of theatre that pulls no punches in its unrelenting depiction of the harsh life that the landscape offered to people, but also the even harsher life that all too many women endured and suffered once that door to their home was closed.
Does this work stand on its own merit? Yes is the answer to that question for me.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Whenever you set out to “reimagine” a classic and much loved work you are inevitably going to be caught between a rock and a hard place as some people will love a new approach and a new perspective being taken and others will brook no variance from the original source material. The question then always is, has the new work, for good or bad, been accepted and judged on its own merits.
In this new production, writer Morna Young and co-conceiver of this project Finn den Hertog, who is also the director, have faced more than a few challenges, not least how to compress the long time line of the original work and its delicately interwoven story into the time allowed for a stage production. Also how to deal a story that potentially required many set changes must have been a challenge to everyone involved.
How to deal with some of these challenges has neatly been sidestepped by simply not dealing with them at all and removing all stage sets except one fixed element, the very earth and the rugged landscape itself on which so much of this story takes place, and the power that it has over everyone, including of course Chris (Danielle Jam). With an earth-filled stage and a landscape backdrop by set and costume designer Emma Bailey, the stark simplicity of this design allows the most important part of Sunset Song, its narrative, to be performed and delivered with no distractions.
This is a work that requires most of the cast to perform not only multiple roles, but also to provide the music (by Finn Anderson) which so often not only becomes a soundscape but an integral part of the story. To add to this, many of the female performers take on male roles too and the most obvious of those is Naomi Stirrat who plays Chris’s brother Will.
The roles of Chris’s parents, John and Jean are performed by Ali Craig and Rori Hawthorn. Both are impressive here and Ali gives us an at times frightening portrayal of a God-fearing, Bible quoting man all too easily prone to domestic violence to both his wife and children. There is an inner strength to Rori’s portrayal of Jean, but also a fragility here that we see crumbling in front of us as this woman can no longer cope with the dwindling options in her life amidst this harsh landscape.
Trapped between the hopes of her father and the dreams of her mother, Chris is caught it seems between both worlds, and Danielle Jam treads that fine line between two personalities well here, particularly when she meets the man of her life Ewan (Murray Fraser) who all too soon shatters her dreams.
For the most part the female to male role switch makes no difference here but, for me, that moment of sheer physical confrontation when Will eventually stands up to his father is now missing.
This Sunset Song is a bold work of theatre that pulls no punches in its unrelenting depiction of the harsh life that the landscape offered to people, but also the even harsher life that all too many women endured and suffered once that door to their home was closed.
Does this work stand on its own merit? Yes is the answer to that question for me.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com