THERE's a problem at the heart of the recent spate of regionally-themed compendiums of short plays that have been championed of late. Sure, it's important for audiences to get a taste for indigenous culture beyond the central belt, as well as for writers and artists to move into the body of the metropolitan kirk, as it were. But, unless writers are nurtured beyond the show-and-tell stage, it smacks of tokenism and insularity.
Sadly, this is, largely, the case with these 10 vignettes by six writers from the Borders for Simon Crouch's Cross Country Theatre Company. For while, on the whole, they exist solidly enough in their own backyard, there's an unwillingness and lack of ambition to engage with anything beyond it that's at fault, while at the same time it wears its influences on its sleeve all too transparently. So we're offered a local version of Under Milk Wood minus the smutty bits - big mistake - before Scottish literature is reinvented with Walter Scott as a Dracula figure, leeching the life blood from his rural retreat. Which is about as post modern as it gets.
There's an X-Files-type sketch about a local monster and a trio of static and punchline-free routines set on a Hawick park bench, which are topical enough, but
little more than interludes.
Only Tom Bryans's The Eighth Deadly Sin - a tale of flatulence on the Edinburgh to Hawick bus - and Jules Horne's astonishing Pawkie Paitterson's Auld Grey Yaud, based on a traditional poem, which finds an ageing horse setting out its last will and testament, attempt to use the local demotic in any way vaguely contemporary, or else attempts to transcend the everyday into a world of unselfconscious poetry.
Director Stewart Aitken's production is a solid, if unspectacular, affair in which three actors shoogle betwixt and between on a set that's 50% superfluous. Textually speaking, there's simply too much reliance on history here, and only with a little more imagination will Borders be crossed into the truly dramatic.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article