ROBIN Jenkins's Second World War-set novel is a broodingly strange affair.
Peter Arnott's new adaptation takes all of Jenkins's concerns about class, good, evil and the self-destructive fear of otherness on the one hand and an empathetic desire to transcend one's own station on the other, and makes a serious statement on the human condition.
Set on a remote Highland estate, the leafy splendour occupied by what are here referred to simply as Lady and Captain, as well as Lady's liberal-minded 12-year-old Roddie, is ripped asunder by the rude intrusion of two brothers, the dour Neil and his brother Callum, the latter of whom would be classed today as having learning disabilities.
Watching over all this is game-keeper Duror, who, with a terminally ill wife in her sick-bed, resembles a contemporary vigilante on the verge and is already on the shortest of fuses. In Callum, Duror recognises imperfections he can't bear, with tragic consequences as he goes into psychological meltdown.
With enough space left for the play to breathe through a set of fine turns led by John Kielty and Ben Winger as the brothers, Ireland brings all this to rich poetic life on Hayden Griffin's mighty-looking set awash with back projections that lend a panoramic scope. Duror's wife Peggy, played by Helen Logan, moves as if operated by puppeteers. The deer being hunted down becomes a Bambi-esque solo dance by Maxine Hamilton. It's Duror's speech betraying his own potential fanaticism, however, juxtaposed here with Pathe news footage of Hitler's holocaust, which chills most.
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