dusky maiden

reviewed sunset song Theatre Royal, GlasgowTOURING SCOTLAND UNTIL NOVEMBER 2HHHH Adaptation is rarely a gentle business, but certain novels put up a fight that will leave the unwary adaptor bruised and bloodied in the dust. Sunset Song might seem just such a tale. The great granite slabs of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's prose, the thick Doric dialect, the rugged rural setting, the sprawling plot it's a prospect as forbidding as the north face of the Eiger.

Alastair Cording's stage version has certainly lasted the course. Originally performed in 1991, it was revived last year in a new production by Ben Twist, which is now resurrected for a major tour. Not having seen it before, I knew of its long history of acclaim but was not convinced it could stand up in the ring with that hefty novel.

The first few minutes do little to allay those reservations. The opening section of Cording's script - a mostly verbal exposition of the 1930s Mearns setting and its characters - is easily the weakest. Indeed, a sense of hasty abridgement endures throughout the first half: incident follows incident in a breezy sequence at odds with the novel's steady accretion of narrative.

However, it's impossible not to be struck by the confidence of the production and the performers, who open the show as a ramshackle band plunking out a handful of traditional songs.

Cording's adaptation was originally staged by TAG Theatre Company and it still bears the unmistakable stamp of then director Tony Graham. Movement and song - with all instruments played by the cast - are integral to its theatrical language; Twist clearly recognises that this is where a dramatisation can outstrip its written source.

Slowly, it begins to pay off. By the end of act one, as the first world war looms, we are thoroughly absorbed in the story of Chris Guthrie - an intelligent, indomitable woman who negotiates her own happiness despite the hardships and social strictures of her environment.

This is thanks in no small part to Cora Bissett, winning and vivacious as ever in the central role; but it's also down to tremendous ensemble work from the other eight performers, with Paul Morrow and Douglas Russell particularly strong as Chris's father John and first husband Ewan. The whole cast's a cappella rendition of The Flowers Of The Forest does not push the narrative forward at all, yet it's a deeply satisfying theatrical moment. Here as elsewhere, Twist shows real flair for making the best use of his resources - the fire scene, for example, is another masterful piece of staging.

Set and lighting design by Neil Warmington and George Tarbuck are also handsome and inventive, though their bright palette does feel more suggestive of Californian sunshine than of the glowering skies of Aberdeenshire. This is, after all, a story in which the landscape is a character, its changes closely charted.

But social change is at the heart of the story. Gibbon holds political commitment up for admiration, but it is Chris's adaptability that enables her to thrive. That change continues today - and the degree to which it should be resisted is still a burning question for Britain's rural communities.

Ultimately this play satisfies not just because it's a rousing story well told, but because its resonances are as universal now as they were when the novel was written.

Copyright 2002
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