Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✩✩✩
by Tim Barrow, directed by Mark Thomson
Royal Lyceum Theatre
March 25-April 12, 2014
Allan Ramsay: "Two Nations. Like oil and water, they cannot mix."
With the referendum in Scotland on secession from Great Britain coming up on September 18, a play about the Act of Union of 1707 could not be more timely. It is therefore a great pity that playwright Tim Barrow has completely blown his chance of writing a significant play on the subject. In the nearly three hours of its running time, there is barely a plot and virtually no character development. Even though the true historical details of the situation are fascinating and pertinent, Barrow is consistently sidetracked by fanciful, now discredited aspects of his characters that have little or nothing to do with the politics of the time.
The setting alternates between a pub in Edinburgh, where poet Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) hangs out and where various members of the Scottish Parliament meet in secret, and the court of Queen Anne in London. What plot there is involves the burgeoning love of Ramsay (Josh Whitelaw) for the prostitute Grace (Sally Reid), a woman in great demand by the members of Parliament. Ramsay, best known in Scotland for his pastoral drama The Gentle Shepherd (1725), is working on a Scottish version of the judgement of Paris where Grace would represent the goddess Aphrodite. She finds it ridiculous but finally touching that Ramsay should be able to see past her low class, rough ways and dishonourable profession. But he does and even proposes marriage.
Meanwhile, Daniel Dafoe (Ifan Meredith), author of Robinson Crusoe now employed as a spy, has travelled to Edinburgh with a list one names of high-ranking Scottish peers along with the bribes the English Treasury is to pay each of them to vote for the Act of Union. These include the Earl of Stair (Tony Cownie), the Earl of Seafield (Mark MacDonnell) and the Duke of Queensberry (Liam Brennan). This last is the most scandalous on the list, not merely because he is notoriously dissolute, but because he consciously puts himself forward as a friend of the cause of Scottish independence while slated for the highest bribe any of them will receive. Ramsay, for instance, firmly believes that Scotland will reject the Act of Union because Queensberry is on side of the Scottish people.
Despite the presence of this list and the obviously pending betrayal of the Scots by their own nobles, Barrow is unable to generate any tension from this situation. The only question is when this deceit will be exposed and that does not happen until the very end of the play.
In between Barrow incomprehensibly wastes time in repetitions of situations he has already shown, whether it is the plight of prostitutes in Edinburgh or the vagaries of Queen Anne. Barrow’s bizarre portrait of Anne, abetted by Mark Thompson’s direction, is particularly egregious. She is shown wearing her coronation crown in her apartments and trying to nurse a doll. Barrow’s general view is that Anne is close to insane. Anne’s real history is tragic. Of seventeen pregnancies, none resulted in an heir to the throne. Many were miscarriages and many lived only a few hours or days. Her child who lived the longest was William, Duke of Gloucester (1689-1700), who died when aged 11.
Barrow refers to this sad history but prefers to think it drove Anne around the bend. In doing so he totally misses its political importance. Without an heir, Anne is the last of the Stuart line. The Scots had been content from the accession of its James VI as James I of England since they were ruled by the Stuarts, who were the heirs of Scotland illustrious monarch Robert the Bruce (1274-1329). But the great fear in England when William died in 1700, was that Scotland would feel free to chose its own king, and Scotland was not constrained as was England, in choosing a Protestant ruler.
Anne’s unfortunate reproductive history thus had a direct influence on the drive by England to keep Scotland within its sphere of influence. In the play, however, Barrow makes it seem that Anne doesn’t have a clue about the importance of Scotland. He even has Anne ask what the point of keeping Scotland is. In reality, Anne emphasized retaining Scotland in her first address to Parliament and was directly involved in the various intrigues to warn Scotland what separation would mean.
Instead of showing this more pertinent side of Queen Anne, Barrow wastes our time in depicting her supposed love affairs with both Sarah Churchill (Rebecca Palmer), her Keeper of the Privy Purse, and the Duke of Marlborough, all the while criticizing her inattentive husband, Prince George of Denmark. None of this is true. Anne was accused of an inappropriate relationship with Abigail Masham, not Sarah Churchill, and even that has been discredited. She had no affair with Marlborough, who was married to Churchill. And Anne was devoted to her husband, whom she asked Parliament to create her “dearly beloved husband King Consort”. The time Barrow spends on these fictions is a waste not just because they are untrue and uninterestingly depicted but because they have nothing to do with Barrow’s topic.
Barrow could have portrayed the Queen’s obsession with retaining Scotland as a type of compensation for not producing an heir. He could also have pointedly contrasted the abundant fertility of the Scottish wench Grace with the curse of childlessness of English Queen. Barrow misses this point not just because he is preoccupied with the fictional scurrility of the English court but because he is too intent on making Grace a symbol of Scotland. Grace, like Scotland, is literally and figuratively repeatedly screwed over by England for paltry payouts. Meanwhile, both Scotland and Grace are pointlessly romanticized by her poet who seems blind to the political and economic realities of the situation. This is the only effective section of Barrow’s play. If only he could have linked it more fully with Anne, his play could have been much stronger.
Of the others, Tony Cownie makes a wonderfully wry Earl of Stair and Mark MacDonnell a comically irritable Earl of Seafield. Keith Fleming is effectively malevolent as Robert Harley and suitable impassioned as the pro-Scottish Lord Belhaven. Liam Brennan, however, seems to have little clue what to do as Queenberry, since neither the text nor the direction give him any guidance. Andy Vincent is equally loud and nothing much else as the Duke of Marlborough and the Duke of Hamilton. Ifan Meredith shows unused potential as Daniel Defoe but is merely silly as Lord Halifax. Rebecca Palmer has little to work with in either of her roles as the prostitute Favour or as Sarah Churchill. And Irene Allan could possibly make a believable Queen Anne if her role had been believably written.
Designer Andrzej Goulding has created an effective set with two revolves that turn to transport us from Edinburgh to London and back. His static projections to indicate place are fine, but the video projections he uses at first distract from the stage action and soon become annoying the longer the short video clips are repeated.
The intrigues surrounding the Act of Union are so fascinating they could have made an important historical drama that could lead to a useful debate about how Scotland came to be part of the United Kingdom and whether it should remain so. Sadly, Barrow has not managed to write a play with a plot or engaging characters. And even though the real history of the events is full of drama, Barrow seems more interested in scandalizing us (as if that were possible in the 21st century) with the imaginary peccadilloes of his characters than in pursuing his topic to the full.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Liam Brennan, Tony Cownie and Mark MacDonnell; Rebecca Palmer, Irene Allan as Queen Anne and Liam Brennan; Josh Whitelaw as Allan Ramsay. ©2014 Royal Lyceum.
For tickets, visit www.lyceum.org.uk.
2014-04-01
Edinburgh, GBR: Union