Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel Sunset Song is no stranger to the Scottish stage.
It's only six years since the late Kenny Ireland directed Alastair Cording's adaptation for His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen. Now, that same version returns in this co-production by the curiously named English theatre company Sell A Door and Greenock's Beacon Arts Centre.
The attraction of the novel isn't difficult to understand. The rural Kincardineshire heroine, Chris Guthrie, whose loves and losses we follow, is one of the most sympathetic characters in Scottish literature. There is much that is dramatic in the narrative, from suicide and infanticide to the First World War. However, whether that drama is easily rendered theatrical is a moot point.
The intensely psychological novels of writers such as Kafka and Orwell serve theatre well. However, the works of vividly descriptive, pastoral authors like Thomas Hardy and Gibbon, encounter more difficulties in the transition.
Cording's play is typical of adaptations of such books in its juddering breaks from the action in order to narrate or provide the audience with one of Gibbon's (admittedly gorgeous) descriptions of the landscape. Like Ireland in 2008, director Julie Ellen tries, but ultimately fails, to find theatrical solutions to this problem; neither the fine live music, nor the heavy-handed choreographed movement, nor Jan Bee Brown's ugly corrugated metal set overcome the structural problems inherent in Cording's script.
This decent but rarely exciting production boasts some lovely performances, not least from Rebecca Elise (an admirable Chris) and Alan McHugh (brutal and broken as Chris's father John). However, not for the first time do we find that this play functions better as a reminder of the brilliance of Gibbon's novel than as a fully rounded work of theatre.
For details, visit: www.selladoor.com
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