PRAISE is due to Elizabeth Newman, artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and her team for their fresh thinking in bringing back live theatre.
Having played a dynamic role in sustaining Scottish theatre through the almost 16 months of the pandemic (not least by way of Sound Stage, the audio drama initiative it created alongside the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh and Naked Productions), Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT) is bringing us back to live theatre in a brilliant, new outdoor auditorium.
Newman commissioned the building of a miniature, wooden amphitheatre in the midst of the gorgeous Explorers Garden which sits adjacent to the PFT building. When the Scottish weather accommodates (as it did, gloriously, for last weekend’s stage premiere of David Greig’s new play Adventures With The Painted People), it is the perfect place to present small-scale theatre productions.
It’s appropriate that this auditorium, which is inspired by the theatres of ancient Greece, should begin its life with Greig’s neatly structured, two-act play, which is set approximately 2000 years ago.
Originally presented as an audio drama (on BBC Radio 3 in June last year), this two-hander focuses on the relationship between Eithne (a Pictish witch who is freelancing for the Caledonian “Salmon People” of Kenmore, on the north tip of Loch Tay) and Lucius (a captured Roman soldier).
Lucius is tied up in a place known, unprepossessingly, as the House of the Dead. In addition, Eithne assures him, he is surrounded by curses that will prevent his escape with metaphysical menaces.
The purpose of the Roman’s capture, following a battle in which the Caledonian warriors were all but wiped out, is as a human shield in Eithne’s planned peace talks with the local Roman governor. The problem is, she hasn’t quite communicated her plan to the Caledonian tribes people. They think Lucius is to be a sacrifice in their next celestial ritual.
THE play revolves around the developing relationship between Eithne (a woman of absolute certainty in her powers of sorcery) and Lucius (a would-be poet who considers himself more a functionary of state than a soldier).
The witch demands that Lucius teach her what it is to be Roman, but ends up teaching him at least as much about the pagan traditions of the Picts and the Caledonian tribes.
This conversation, typically of Greig, ranges between the comic, the poetic and the genuinely touching. The playwright’s audacity in reimagining a historical moment is reminiscent of the work of English dramatist Howard Barker, and, despite the modest simplicity of the amphitheatre’s small stage, it offers the audience a moment of breathtaking surprise in the short second act.
This little design coup is particularly unexpected given the minimal design of Newman’s production, which combines modern dress with a nod to Greig’s period (presumably by way of whatever came to hand in PFT’s wardrobe department).
Ben Occhipinti’s sound and music lend themselves generously to the play, as does the lighting design of Jeanine Byrne, which has to take into account the varying qualities of the natural light that illuminates the stage.
The production (which comes in at around two hours, including interval) is charming and compelling. This has as much to do with the performance of Kirsty Stuart (who is absolutely captivating as the richly expressive and ribald Eithne) as it does with Greig’s text. Nicholas Karimi’s Lucius is, appropriately, in awe of his captor, but noticeably strained in the character’s more emotional moments.
The play is a modest drama with some big ideas. I can’t help but feel, however, that Greig has sold it short by wrapping it in a blanket of somewhat predictable romance.
Runs until July 4. For further details, visit: pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
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