Wallace
Wallace
The Arches, Glasgow
Neil Cooper
On the weekend before the Scottish independence referendum, it perhaps was not unusual to witness someone all Bravehearted-up in kilt and Saltire face paint going in to see a play called Wallace. Especially when the play in question is the centrepiece of a mini-referendum festival thrown by the Arches called Early Days.
As it turns out, that audience member is one Wallace Williamson, a very special guest of The Great Cause, a political chat show that forms the first part of Rob Drummond's timely new play.
Also in attendance is an all-too-familiar parcel of rogues, including Honourable Members from the SNP and Conservative Party, a newspaper scandal-monger, a controversial comedian and the show's charming hostess herself. As awkward questions are asked by a mix of plants and the actual audience, some very dirty laundry is aired, revealing the flawed human face behind the professional political classes.
A second act lurch into historical territory is followed by Wallace's attempts to make amends for being a small nation's accidental laughing stock.
With Drummond himself playing Wallace in David Overend's production (co-commissioned by The Arches and what, for the time being at least, we must call the National Theatre of Great Britain), the result is a typically Drummondesque mix of a pop-culture facade that ushers in some deceptively serious dramatic, philosophical and moral points about politics and what passes for democracy.
While there is a lot to grab hold of, given that Wallace is still a work in development nurtured by the National Theatre Studio, one wonders how it will contextualise itself once the referendum is history. For the time being, at least, freedom seems to reign.
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